Laptop with wireless "no problems" - what's the advisable distro?
 

Hi,

In laptops, what's the best distro to avoid wireless problems?


Regards

Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Linux Mint

If you have an unsupported wireless chipset, you will always have problems, regardless of distro.

Agreed. Wireless support doesn't vary much between distros. It is much more dependent on the wireless hardware than any distro choice.

Hi,

I have two Acer laptops (Aspire 3680 with Broadcom and Aspire 5100 with Atheros) and i managed to get it working in the 3680, but the day after, it wouldn't work anymore.
I've searched in forums and then installed wicd and other advised programs, but nothing worked.

Then, i emailed the Acer Suport and they said that their computers was shipped with Micro$oft and thus they wouldn't advise nor recommend any linux distro nor any other solution; just told me to use the recovery partition to reinstall Micro$h*t!
There's no need to tell i've replied saying they'd never see another euro from me again!

I've tried with Kubuntu 8.04 and i'll try now other distros, just to see what happens.

Regards

Those two chipsets have rather different needs, and will be supported more or less the same in all distros.

Broadcom - Two choices:

1) Native linux b43/b43-legacy driver. You almost always have to create firmware from a Windows driver in order to get this working

2)Ndiswrapper and a Windows driver

Atheros - Use madwifi or ath5k

Picking a distro you like and working out the wireless is going to be a better approach than distro hopping and hoping one will work.

My Acer 3680 has a Atheros AR5007EG, it isn't supported by any native driver, except a hacked beta release. I use ndiswrapper, because the native driver doesn't allow my switch or light to work.