8.04 networking seems awfully broken.

[Karl Larsen]

Grant Edwards wrote:
> I keep reading reviews about how Ubuntu "just works", so I
> decided to give it a try by installing Ubuntu 8.04 as an
> alternative OS on a laptop belonging to somebody who normally
> uses Windows, but would be willing to give Linux a try.
>
> I'd have to say that the networking support seems to quite a
> mess (at least compared to other distros I use):
>
>   
    Which other distros have you loaded on this computer?


>   1) There's a daemon called avahi-autoipd that keeps starting
>      up and f*&king up the network configuration.  I configured
>      the interfaces to use DHCP.  That means that if there's no
>      response from a DHCP server, then keep trying until there
>      _is_ a response from a DHCP server.  I don't recall
>      checking a box that said "only use DHCP until you get
>      bored and want to pull an IP address out of your ass".
>
>   
    You seem to have an issue with the loader software. Was it too 
simple for an expert like yourself? As I recall the network part of the 
loader was preset and you just hit Enter and go on.
>      I've never seen even a single network that uses link-local
>      IP discovery.  I'm sure it's cool in theory, but why
>      that's enabled by default is beyond understanding.
>
>   
    Well don't stop there. Explain what link-local IP discovery is? I 
didn't know Hardy had any.

>      Disabling it in the services applet doesn't help either --
>      you've got to fire up a terminal window and apt-get remove
>      the package.
>
>   
    Now that is a really stupid thing to do!

>   2) Firmware for the the wireless chipset had to be manually
>      downloaded, extracted (using a utility that had to be
>      built from a source tarball), and copied into
>      /lib/firmware.
>   

    Which chipset would that be?
>   3) I've configured the wireless interface to use WPA, but
>      wpa_supplicant doesn't start on boot-up.  You've got to
>      fire up a terminal and do "/etc/init.d/network restart" to
>      get wpa_supplicant running.
>
>   
    Yes and that is really hard to do isn't it. Poor boy.
>   4) Once wpa_supplicant is running, the network management
>      applet seems incapable of configuring wpa_supplicant with
>      the password. It's unable to associate until one fires up
>      a terminal, starts wpa_cli, and sets the password
>      manually.
>
>   
    Gosh a password too? What kind of WiFi are you stealing? Maybe this 
is the whole problem. If you had just loaded Hardy and rebooted and did 
the little easy things and then let it just sit turned on for 30 
minutes, it might have just started working. Mine did.
> End result: a waste of about 8 hours of my time and a black eye
> for Linux.
>
>   
    From my experience with Hardy it had zero problem with the network. 
On this computer it found the ethernet card and worked. On my laptop it 
loaded and after a few minutes it discovered WiFi and worked.


Karl

-- 

	Karl F. Larsen, AKA K5DI
	Linux User
	#450462   http://counter.li.org.
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