Why I won't be using Breezy

On Wednesday 09 November 2005 20:08, John wrote:
> 3. The first time I logged into KDE, I liked what I saw (still do), but
> the apparent lack an email client was a surprise. I later found kmail is
> actually installe, just not in any menu.
>
> While I use Konqueror a lot, there are times when I prefer Firefox or
> even Mozilla. I did expect to see Firefox, and also Thunderbird which I
> think is currently a better email client than kmail. Well, kmail before
> this, I've not tried this version yet.

I've found that kmail tends to handle mailboxes of significantly larger sizes 
than Thunderbird. I'm running plain Ubuntu and I use Kmail over Evolution 
because I find it easier to use for a number of things.

That said, if it's not on the menu, the user can't use it!

> 5.
> I was able to use system-settings to configure wireless, but wireless
> didn't come up at first because of this line in /etc/network/interfaces:
> iface eth0 inet

That's definitely incomplete, and it could be related to the reboot you had 
during the install process when you were playing with iwlist. If that file 
was being installed and never finished being written to, it would definitely 
explain why it was incomplete.

> 9. This is a suggestion for improvement.
> When I plug a cable into my Mac ( OS X), it's automatically configured,
> and the system sets IP addresse, host name, routes and so on. When the
> wire is removed, this is undone.
>
> I'd like Ubuntu Linux to do the same.

Agreed. I'm rather sick of the default reliance on network connectivity in 
many distributions. There are many times when I'm without a network, and I'd 
like the boot process speeded up by skipping all the network related programs 
at boot (eg: bringing up the network in the first place, ntp, etc).

Basically we need to set up something to automatically up/down the interface. 
There are programs that can do this sort of thing but IMHO they're all a bit 
dodgy (least when I looked at them back pre-Hoary), so while looking to 
something else may be good, it may be easier to re-write this properly. It'd 
also be good to be able to get this to announce stuff on dbus that an 
interface is available/unavailable/etc.

> 10. This is a suggestion for improvement.
> The Bos (not me) wants the Macs at school, when they're moved around the
> premises to automatically switch airports (access points). I can see
> this is problematic if different servers assign IP addresses as they
> move, but in our case the airports do not run DHCP servers, they are
> invisible to the IP transmission layers and it should work.
>
> I've not discovered how to do it on OS X (closing an opening the lid
> doesn't count), but if it can be done, then I think Ubuntu Linux should
> do it.

Does the network of airports have the same ESSID, or are they all different?

If they're all the same, and you've connected to the Airport by configuring 
Unbutu to use the ESSID (not the AP's MAC address), then this should work. 
Unfortunately, the "when" of roaming from one AP to another is not a well 
defined process, and no real standards exist (YET!) to handle Roaming when 
not in distress (eg: when there is no signal between you and the target AP, 
and you roam, you are "roaming in distress"). And by standards, I'm referring 
to IEEE 802.11* standards, not just what various vendors do.

If they all have different ESSID's, then you need an app to do the choosing 
for you. But this also will only happen in distress. It may be worthwise that 
said app should allow you to set a signal level to consider the "floor" 
level, which it should consider roaming. You'd also want a time that the 
signal needs to stay below this level to avoid false trips.

However, connecting to just any-old network in the area is a bad idea. You 
really want to set a preferential list of networks (and have an easy way to 
add more when they're detected) to connect to when they're available. Yes, 
this sounds suspiciously like Microsoft's Wilress ZeroConfig interface, and 
it's based on what a number of vendors did early off on Windows with their 
wireless drivers (eg: Cisco, Symbol). It's not a new idea, and it's just a 
matter of getting it right, unlike Microsoft's Wireless ZeroConfig interface, 
which has lots of annoying problems.

I'd also like to see config options for things such as PEAP/EAP-TTLS, etc, 
even on non-wireless interfaces, as these technologies are (becoming if not 
already) very prevalent in the enterprise market.

I've not yet really used the wireless in Ubuntu since going to Breezy (simply 
had no need yet), so I'm not going to comment on what it has. The above are 
just observations from someone who is well versed in wireless on multiple 
levels, and shows what I'd like to see out of any wireless client utility.

-- 
 Stuart Young - aka Cefiar - cef at optus.net