Christian Seberino wrote:
>>Note that there is steady and ongoing development on WiFi support on
>>Linux, including this chipset, so it is not unusual to have to update
>>the driver and/or firmware with a kernel upgrade.
>>
DJA
If RaLink wifi drivers are in distros that means that when you
upgrade a kernel you get the new versions automagically without
needing to do a driver updade/recompile yourself right?
Chris
You'll have the latest _stable_ release, but not necessarily the latest
release. That means that, while the driver is stable and won't crash
your system, it may not have much functionality. If you follow various
WiFi related dev lists you'll see that the code changes on a daily,
sometimes hourly basis and so improvement is slow but steady.
I don't know anything specific about any WiFi driver other than the
Intel IPW2200 so I can't speak to how stable and functional the RaLink
works over time.
When I upgraded FC4 on my laptop recently, for example, both ACPI and
the IPW2200 code stopped working. I have to patch the kernel to get ACPI
working (via ACPI4Asus) and get the latest IPW2200 firmware from Intel
(and probably the matching driver from the dev list).
Also keep in mind that there are multiple factors governing WiFi
reliability at any given time: wireless tools, wireless extensions,
DHCPClient, Dbus, ACPI, and HAL, and add-ons like NetworkManager. Things
change in all of these, and because those changes happen asynchronously,
if one mechanism changes, it may break others.
My conclusions after having used WiFi on a laptop for about a year now,
is that all WiFi (and ACPI) support in Linux is broken and in a
continuous state of "Being fixed". One day it works, a yum -y update
later maybe it doesn't.
--
Best Regards,
~DJA.
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