8.04 networking seems awfully broken.

[Derek Broughton]

Grant Edwards wrote:

> I've no clue what you're talking about.  Other distros (e.g.
> Gentoo) typically provide "firmware" packages that alleviate
> the need for the user to manually download files, binary
> extracters, etc.

Ubuntu does that where they're legally permitted to.
> 
>>>      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.
> 
> Google it, dude.
> 
>>>      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!
> 
> Why is that?  

Never mind Karl, he's practically always wrong.  There's no reason most of
us can't simply remove avahi, but it won't help your situation.

>>>   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?
> 
> Broadcom 4306

For which, I know from experience, it gives you explicit instructions what
you need to do.  The firmware is not distributed by Ubuntu because it can't
legally be distributed - and those instructions tell you that, too.  That
said, it doesn't require _manually_ building from a source tarball.

>> 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.
> 
> Having to wait 30 minutes for a network interfaces is _not_
> "working".

The first time only - but it does require that you get the firmware, first.
-- 
derek