The Linux Extremist

After I completed a trial of PC BSD on one of my desktop machines, I was looking forward to moving it over to Fedora Core 5. Then I discovered something which stayed my hand; apparently wireless support for Fedora Core 5 is quite weak. Unlike Ubuntu and PC BSD, it does not come with the Madwifi drivers for Atheros cards as standard. There are plenty of how-tos, but the problem is that if wireless is the only connection one has for a particular machine, you’re fairly stuck - most require downloading drivers, through a connection that is more deus ex machina than anything practical.

Frustrated, I thought about moving to OpenSuse instead. After all, I’d used Suse before and never had this problem. However since version 10.1, Suse is moving backwards in this regard, there is no in-built support for Atheros cards.

This is disappointing, particularly since Ubuntu’s support for Atheros cards is perfect.  It also exposes the one Achilles heel of many Linux distributions; while it is outstanding in most ways, support for wireless still remains a problem.

With the rise of wireless internet and the increasing use of laptops, one would think that development teams would be pushing onward towards greater compatibility with a variety of wireless chipsets, not removing support for cards which have long had that support.  However, some distributions seem to disregard wireless almost entirely: for example, Fedora Core’s support is extremely poor. So far as I can tell, they solely support the Intel Centrino chipset “out of the box”.  This is maddening as Fedora’s support for everything else from sound cards and graphics cards is outstanding.

Fortunately, the team at Ubuntu is much more clued up about such things; their wireless support, which was always good, appears to be improving over time.  This may partially explain why Ubuntu is now the most popular distribution; it involves no ripping of hair out in order to enjoy the full benefits of wireless networking.  The developers of PC BSD also appear to understand this; while BSD’s support for wireless chipsets is still fairly narrow (they support Intel Centrino wireless and Atheros) at least this is more than what Fedora Core has on offer.

I suggest that developers working on Fedora and OpenSuse need to realise that the Linux Revolution could be hindered by a refusal to tackle this issue.  Not everyone wants to hack around with their machine merely to get onto the internet.  It will deter the nervous.  Or it may just mean that the future will belong to Ubuntu.

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