Linux No wifi. Still.

For the record, I just installed Ubuntu 14.04 on a machine that has a TP-Link TL-W727N wifi dongle* which works perfectly and more or less instantly on every version of Windows down to XP.

Does it work?

Does it nuts.

Is Linux ever, ever going to get its collective head out of its collective backside on this problem? It has been like this for a decade.

* Edit - To forestall the inevitable, yes, I know it's really a ralink somethingorother and they're evil and won't release their source code and and and... and I don't care, I just need it to work.

 

I have to ask but why are you still using Linux?
All you seem to do is regale everyone with stories about how awful it is, maybe you should stick to Windows and save yourself the hassle of having to deal with technical issues.

 

In the forlorn hope that one day I'll get an answer to that question.

I do also have a firm fairness policy under which I post here whenever Windows does similar things to me. The difference is - it doesn't.

I did eventually get it working. I'm not sure how. A lot of shell commands were involved, involving "apt-get", "git clone" and "make", which I suspect didn't work, and "modprobe", which I suspect did, but can't really tell as none of them produced any useful progress or debug output. The only thing I can say for sure is that the process to make this particular wifi dongle work was nothing like any other process I've ever used to make anything else work.

Possibly the required magic phrase on this occasion was:

Code:

echo 'install rt2800usb modprobe --ignore-install rt2800usb ; /bin/echo "148f 7601"      > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rt2800usb/new_id' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rt2800usb.conf

...obviously.

P

 

So what your saying is you want Linux to be more like Windows?

Why not just use Windows and save yourself (and us) the trouble, it's like saying you don't like chicken but still you keep eating it.

 

OSX then Bosh, sorted.

 

I've never had any issue with Railink stuff not working Linux, it's always worked out the box no issue.

You must have one of the very early ones. Might be worth buying a new one ?

 

So you readily admit that you know it’s an issue with the hardware manufacturer but you are bashing Linux for it?

I heard these are pretty good. Comes wtih a full QWERTY keyboard and 4-directional cursor mouse

 

Actually more or less the opposite - I wish people would stop trying to make it into a bad copy of windows and instead start trying to solve some of the most deep-seated issues it has. I have no interest in it being Windows. I have an interest in it being sensible and consistent and reliable and well-standardised. I don't care if it ends up with the squishy-button interface from the engineers' starship in Prometheus, so long as it makes some sort of consistent, logical sense.

It's not really an admission of fault, is it? I guess I'm really just reiterating the standard linux excuse, which tends to go: "we are encouraging people to use an operating system for which we know most hardware manufacturers do not release drivers, but we're just sort of ignoring the situation."

Again, it works on windows.

Not on this occasion.

I don't know. I don't care. I don't think so, to be honest, since they're still available.

And now we're back to the standard "it's the manufacturer, get a new one, it's the distro, get a new one, it's you, you're an idiot..." dance of destruction to which there is ultimately no solution other than randomly trying 101 options until you find one that works, which is ludicrous.

Well, OK, you could, but you'd have no way of knowing whether it'd have the same problem. In theory, you could google around to find out what chipset is actually being used by a SuperLink SL-150N SuperDongle, or whatever, and you could google around and find out whether there's linux-for-some-value-of-linux driver for that chipset, and then you could google further to see if there's a way of getting that driver onto your particular revision of your distro and have it usefully work...

...but even if you verified all that by googling, you'd know full well that the reliability of that sort of information is often feeble at best.

Gah.

P

 

What you describe "being sensible and consistent and reliable and well-standardised" that's Windows even more so Apple, perhaps you're failing to grasp what the effects and outcome of open source versus proprietary software has on the overall ecosystem.

Who is this person encouraging you to use Linux? Show me who it is so i can take them outside and shoot them.

So you readily admit that most hardware manufacturers do not release drivers for Linux but somehow that a fault of the Linux community and not the hardware manufacturers !

Stop using Linux and use Windows then.

Or is it that you're the Anastasia Steele of the operating system world.

 

I fully understand the effects that the open source development model has on the overall ecosystem. I just think it's an incredibly bad idea, which could easily be predicted to have exactly the disastrous effect it has had. I'm not quite sure why people feel the need to defend it. It's hardly controversial to contend that if you allow any number of people to run off and develop various parts of an operating system with absolutely no centralised planning or managerial oversight, you're going to end up with a complete mess. I don't think I'm teaching anyone anything by saying that. So why on earth do they do it?

Canonical.

You're missing the point. I don't care whether the manufacturers release drivers. I care that someone releases drivers. If people are going to create an operating system an offer it for use, with the implicit understanding that it works then it is their responsibility to ensure it does work.

And no, I have no time whatsoever for all this sniveling about "the hope that it will be useful". That's excuses. If an outfit like Canonical, or Red Hat, or whichever other commercial or enthusiast organisation creates a piece of software and releases it, if they're going to take credit for having created it, they have a responsibility to ensure it is of reasonable quality, and that makes this their problem.

Personally if I were involved in Linux development I would be at pains to create the most positive possible relationship between myself and hardware manufacturers because this is a huge problem and it has been one for decades, but Linux as a gestalt really doesn't seem to get it.

P

 

If you understand the effects that the open source development model has on the overall ecosystem then why do you moan about it when you already know what those effects are?

No one is defending anything other than the rights of people to choose what suits them best, just because the open source model doesn't suit you, or you happen to think it's a bad way of developing software doesn't mean everyone is going to agree with you or allow you berate something you have professed a dislike for.

Much like if you professed your dislike for someones religious beliefs, or that they like chicken and you didn't, it's called live and let live, tolerance of others.

{citation needed}

If you buy hardware it's up to you and the manufacturer to ensure it's going to work with what you intend to use it with, when manufacturers were slow to release drivers for Vista was that Microsofts fault? Should they have written their own drivers for other peoples hardware?

Then moan about it on their forums then.

And how would you go about creating that positive relationship between yourself and hardware manufacturers?

How do you think Microsoft done it back in the day of Windows 95?

 

NEVER GIVE UP PHIL!



YOU ENJOY IT SO MUCH!

 

It's more an issue of looking at people doing something that's quite obviously having a disastrous result, and wondering why they keep doing it.

At the end of the day, some people have different aims in computing than others, but I think that the generic cloud of ill-defined people that hover around linux and the open source movement need to recognise that they can't have it all ways. They can't have their wonderful egalitarian development paradigm and produce software that works reliably. Cannot both have and eat cake, etc.

P

 

Im with you Phil.... and Im guessing there is a past here.

I have tried linux on many occasions, even have a dual boot laptop with mint 15 on it (thats now obsolete) and also had a hand at a raspberry Pi...... but linux is so frustrating from a non programmers point of view! I was trying to get a touch screen to calibrate under linux... I changed what was advised and it broke until I reloaded it all again. Even the developer of the patch couldnt understand why it wouldnt work. Tried it under windows and had it calibrated and working in under 5 min. Thats the problem with Linux....

I like the squishy windows environment and how easy it is to make things happen and thats why I always end up back there!

 

But that's the thing your not just looking and wondering, your voicing an opinion on a public forum, your insisting on using something that by your own admission you don't like, think is a disaster, and isn't working.

Like i said your the sadist of the operating system world, if you don't like something don't do it, use it, eat it, etc, etc. Just don't be shocked when not everyone shares your view.

Same here, I've tried Linux (slackware) and found i didn't have the time to make things happen, even though i enjoyed making those things happen.

 

I love Phil Rhodes and his unwillingness to ever let Linux do anything other than upset him. I sometimes literally sit here staring at the screen willing more of these threads to start, so I can sit back, have a read and a good laugh.

 

Yes, and? There's possibly one of me for every million people saying linux is fixed and lovely and all works fine. Which it demonstrably doesn't.

When people stop trying to say that linux is actually working and usable for day to day tasks, I will stop objecting. People need to know.

Let it? I keep giving the damn thing a chance. It keeps falling at the first hurdle, again and again and again. I hesitate to take responsibility.

P

 

So, you see this as a public service you're providing?

 

I don't think it's particularly anything to do with me, but I do think that the people (the very very many people) who are cheerleaders for linux as an every day desktop OS really need to shut up until it actually works.

P

 

I'm just wondering if you're going at it from the wrong angle. Instead of railing at it for being incomplete, perhaps join in on the quest to improve it?

You could've reposted this thread as "Ubuntu fix for TP-Link TL-W727N wifi dongle".

Just a thought