Those have gotten a lot better in recent years. Last time I had an issue with WiFi drivers was in 2016.
Graphics drivers, on the other hand, especially Optimus...
this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Some of us are still recovering from the trauma
I never have. Just thinking about WiFi and Bluetooth drivers on random laptops still puts me into a full flashback state. (My first experience was back in 2002, I think?)
However, getting all of that stuff working was the best learning experience I ever had. At the time, I was just learning about IT security and WiFi pcap was all the rage back then.
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Even a decade ago it usually meant ticking a box that you also allowed nonfree drivers.
Even Debian allowed you to download the specific nonfree driver you needed and add it (without Internet) at imaging so post install you could connect with wifi and not just Ethernet.
It's come a long way. But doesn't anyone else remember when windows did not have drivers and you'd constantly be confronted with "have disk"?
I mean, the amount of drivers for old hardware I still have saved... Because before win10 nothing would reliability always fetch the driver you need from the net...
This reminds me of the big USB drive of drivers that we had at a PC repair shop. When Windows 7 failed to find drivers, we’d stick that in and give it a scan.
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All my Wi-Fi just works on any machine I have Linux on. But yeah years ago this was not the case.
Mine doesn't work. Definitely linux's fault that I destroyed its wifi giblets while moving my PC a bit too aggressively
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Am I supposed to have Wifi driver issues? My laptop's one always worked flawlessly without me having to even look at it
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ndiswrapper flashbacks o_o
I thought I had completely erased this from my memory. Turns out I did not. I would thank you if it wasn't such a traumatic experience.
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Lemmy needs polls. The last time I had problems with WIFI drivers was... 15 years ago? On a laptop bought in a supermarket that originally came with Windows Vista. Oh, and the raspberry pi - fuck raspberry pis. They can't pick wifi module worth shit.
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To be fair most wifi device manufacturers are bastards and don't publicise manuals.
Fucking fuck realtek
Tell me you haven't used Linux in the past ~20 years without telling me you haven't used Linux in the past ~20 years
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Jesus Christ OP use trigger warnings
Broadcom
*shudders*
Broadcom looks good next to Realtek, and both of them stand head and shoulders above Mediatek.
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Extremely outdated, but would still work with fingerprint sensors or NFC readers
Absolutely not outdated. I had a horrible time getting my hands on a working driver for the WiFi card in my brand new laptop last year. Horrible enough to resort to Ubuntu and even that gave me the finger. When I finally had it working I had to manually rebuild the damned thing each kernel update because I couldn't convince DKMS to do it automatically. Had to wait two or three kernel releases for the card to be supported 'out of the box'.
So no, fuck WiFI drivers in Linux. If it is not in the kernel and the manufacturer doesn't provide one, don't expect fun times.
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This was true maybe 10 years ago, nowadays Linux has better driver support than Windows. Printers, networking, input devices, everything I've tried is plug n play with Linux, Windows you gotta driver hunt.
Am I the only person who doesn't have WiFi problems?
10-15 years ago, it was a problem dire enough to drive me back to windows until about the start of the pando, and I've not even thought about Wi-Fi drivers since coming back to Linux.
I did have issues with a cheap USB Wi-Fi dongle thing a few years back, but that was likely the fault of the dongle more than anything else, I know because it didn't really work under widows either.
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Phew. For a second there I thought the book would be about Bluetooth in Linux.
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I have a few wifi adapters from china who only work properly under Linux lmfao
Did Microsoft actually infiltrate Lemmy or something? I'm hearing of issues about Linux that haven't existed since the very first days of desktop Linux
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The last time I had an issue with Linux drivers was in 2002, trying to set up a pppoe connection. I had no smartphone and there were no YouTube, Reddit, wikis, forums etc.
Back in 2016 I helped install some wifi drivers on a friend's laptop in Ubuntu 16.04, which was not really a big deal.
I feel like these memes are made by Windows users :)
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Hey, as long as I ignore the thousand of entries in the error log I get every day from the iwlwifi kernel module crashing and restarting every 10 minutes its fine.
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What killed my interest in Linux in highschool. Kept trying to get Ubuntu working but couldn't get the internet to work for anything. Given that every help guide boiled down to "Go to this website and download x" and I didn't have internet because... no wifi, I ended up getting frustrated enough to quit the whole thing. Maybe someday.
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You can buy a external AR9271 WiFi adapter for $20 thats fully free software/free firmware.
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There are whole-ass companies selling laptops with Linux preinstalled now. They work. Even with Bluetooth.
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Me struggling with Realtek on Linux 🤝 One of my partners struggling with Nvidia on Linux
At least I managed to get a Linux-compatbile wifi USB later on, but it was pricey to import it and it's still quite slow :/
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I've never had an issue with any drivers on Linux, everything I use just works. Even some old obscure drawing tablet from 2005 that said it required you to install its driver worked instantly.
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This vibes with me, but fifteen years ago me.
Installed Ubuntu on my first netbook and had to sit in the stairs to the second floor jacked into the single Ethernet cable we had for a few hours to troubleshoot it.
I haven't used every distro, but it seems like most of them are plug and play these days.
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Lots of people saying this is an old problem , but I have a new IdeaPad I bought a few months ago and any non-rolling release distro I find, the wifi hardware isn't detected.
Until just a few weeks ago I couldn't find any solution. Fortunately I finally found a way to build the drivers, but it still requires me to tether my phone to get internet long enough to download the source.
So the problem might be better but it's not the non-issue some people are pretending it is.
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Try Windows. It regularly breaks drivers (not only WiFi) on some hardware (mostly HP). I've never had issues with WiFi on Linux on HP, Dell, Microsoft Surface and even a Macbook.
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This is definitely a meme for AntiqueMemesRoadshow lol
The thing is, there's "iwd" and "wpa_supplicant". You use either one or the other, but not both. Sources like the Gentoo handbook will tell you that but, not all Wiki's do as good a job of pointing that out <...looking directly at you Arch...>.
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Funny that my brand new laptop just arrived today and its own wifi card wasn't recognized in Windows, so I had to use my phone via usb-tethering. It's a Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (14APU8) by the way, Ryzen 7th gen, full AMD, OLED etc. It came without any OS (no way I'm paying for Windows lol) and my first Win11 experience on this laptop was "please choose a network to continue" and no networks were displayed at all, because wifi card had no drivers (Realtek btw). Windows setup wouldn't let me continue without a network, but there was no way to have a network. Funny Win11 moment right there. After some hours configuring everything I then installed my usual dual-boot Fedora and everything worked even in the live-usb. This meme is not valid for Linux anymore. Windows however, now thats a meme.
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The good news: Broadcom got out of the labtop industry
Bad news: Broadcom is in the phone industry
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Strange. One of them main reasons I wiped my Dell XPS OEM Windows and installed Linux was for -better- WiFi behaviour.
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