Very bad status of hardware (especially wifi) support in ubuntu, due to the too many accumulated regressions

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

> So far most of the errors I've seen reported for wifi and that I have
> come across have either been because of faulty upgrades (a major
> problem) or lack of firmware or (and this was bad) drivers loading
> before all their dependencies or after a cut-off module has been loaded.
> 
> Best of luck with your problem, developers in various communities
> continue to work very hard on wifi and network problems.
> 
> Martin

The problems with intel wifi cards are various and many keep existing in 
intrepid - many times in the past also with other laptops, with intel 
2100-2200 cards I've not been able to connect to the network.

Intrepid is a pain also for webcams and tablet (xournal is affected by a 
problem in libgnomecanvas which should be trivial to fix, however it's 
there, plus you have to struggle with the things said today in another 
thread).  Intrepid is a pain also because audio input is broken for me. 
I think I reported the bug but am now too lazy to check. I reported tons 
of hardware bugs in the past and the fix cycle is 2 years on the 
average. This makes ubuntu typically unusable. I've never seen a release 
that is able to cover the whole of any of the laptops we own at home (4 
at the moment). VGA out, SD card reader, tablet, webcam, audio input, 
network. Some of them work in a release, some of them in another. In the 
end, you never see your laptop "just working" in a single release. 
That's a pity, and that happens to other laptops in my department. In 
the past, I strongly advocated the usage of free software to many 
people, and the fact that ubuntu works on most laptops (whereas people 
said to me "hey, I have a laptop, that's why I don't bother with linux". 
I am tired of this, because in the end I discovered they are becoming 
more and more right.

Said this, the edimax card should be working and is reported to work 
very well under ubuntu. I contacted the bug reporter personally and 
think he is going to close the bug - it was just a temporary problem. I 
just ordered it - hope it won't be wasted money.

Vincenzo