Rod and all,
Fellow Linux Comrade I feel your pain.
There is a reason I have not installed Mepis on my nice new AMD
64 powered laptop - and you've hit it - hardware issues, then ease of
operation.
Linux is a wonderful thing - it spawned the opensource movement
that we now all benefit from, but in its infinate variations and
customized distributions, it lacks one thing - a single database of
compatible hardware and software packages, which results in this type
of annoying, pain in the butt issue.
I have said that Linux (particularly Mepis) was an easy OS to
install and use, and I maintain that judgement. I have not however
used it with wireless, and quite frankly, now I don't think I will!
Linux works well for 'traditional' networking, even across
Windows networks with SAMBA - it works great, but I'm not trying
wireless.
I don't know what the solution is, but we've taken the first
step by identifying the problem.
cya, Joey
On 20 Oct 2005 06:11:26 -0000, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> social Digest 20 Oct 2005 06:11:26 -0000 Issue 162
>
> Topics (messages 2207 through 2207):
>
> Wireless Networking in Linux - Redux
> 2207 by: Rod Engelsman
>
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> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Rod Engelsman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: [email protected]
> Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 11:57:44 -0500
> Subject: Wireless Networking in Linux - Redux
> Gentlemen, Comrades, Friends, and Associates:
>
> I have a statement to make that you will all probably find
> provocative -- perhaps even offensive -- but I believe it is true
> nonetheless.
>
> "At the current state of the art, the Linux operating system is a
> security hazard when employed on computers communicating via wireless
> networks."
>
> Which is to say, unless you are a) very lucky or very careful in
> selecting hardware, b) reasonably proficient with the command line and
> configuration scripts, and c) willing to do a BUNCH of homework and
> experimentation, setting up a secure wireless network is probably beyond
> your capabilities and may be entirely impossible.
>
> We all know that an unsecured network is... well, insecure, duh. And WEP
> is easily broken with modern hardware and freely available GNU/Linux
> hacker tools. The only decent wireless security is some flavor of WPA,
> preferably WPA-RADIUS with 802.1x authentication. This provides 256-bit
> encryption with rotating keys and centralized challenge-response
> authentication. For home users WPA-PSK (which utilizes pre-set keys for
> authentication, rather than a central server) is reasonably secure.
>
> I have three computers in the house -- four if you count this dual-boot
> box as two, which it is in a very real sense, since what is a computer
> without an OS? A Dell laptop that came with a wireless card, a Toshiba
> laptop that I stuck a Linksys card into, and this box with a D-Link
> wireless pci card. The Dell runs XP and the Toshiba runs FC4. The dual
> boot box runs both.
>
> Frankly, it was enough of a trick just to get the wireless cards working
> at all under Linux. Fortunately, the D-Link card has an Atheros chipset
> so it will work with mad-wifi. I "only" had to install a custom kernel
> and screw around for half a day to get WEP to work.
>
> The Toshiba required a distro with ndiswrapper to use the Windows
> drivers since there are no Linux drivers for that card. First I tried
> Ark Linux. That would only get a little way through the install before
> it would eject the cdrom and reboot for no apparent reason -- it's now a
> shiny coaster. Then I tried Mepis. I got it to actually install the
> drivers and it worked unsecured, but for some odd reason every time I
> would log into KDE it would launch three -- not 1, not 2, but 3 --
> instances of KWiFiManager that would sit there and blink and tell me it
> couldn't connect, even though I could close them out and use Firefox
> just fine. Weird.
>
> So I got tired of trying to figure out where Mepis keeps the config
> files -- what little I know of Linux is Redhat/Fedora -- and then the
> stupid thing totally locked up on me, for about the 5th time --
> requiring a power-off reboot. Got out my FC4 discs and installed
> something I halfway understand. Then I had to sneakernet a few packages
> over to it and got the wireless working -- unsecured. Let it do about
> 198 updates -- no exaggeration -- and then installed ndiswrapper and
> wpa_supplicant from ATRPMs. I have spent probably a week and a half now
> Googling, asking around on newsgroups, and studying the sample config
> files, etc. trying to get this all to work together.
>
> And that's where I stand. I'm not an expert at Linux, but I'm also not
> stupid, and I actually DO know a thing or two about networking. This is
> just too hard, too convoluted, too poorly documented, and consists of
> entirely too many moving parts. I have to face the reality that this
> particular combination of hardware, software, and protocols simply may
> not be capable of functioning.
>
> Wireless networking is not particularly new. It's not an odd corner of
> computing that one should maybe expect to have trouble with. How many
> people out there have laptops that they would like to connect wirelessly
> to the Internet? More and more every day. The Linux community HAS to get
> a better handle on this.
>
> It baffles me why some of the major distributions don't tackle this head
> on.
>
> Rod
>
> BTW, it takes all of about 10 minutes, tops, to set up a secure wireless
> network with "that other" OS.
>
>
>
--
--Joey Kelley, HAPT, L.J.L.P.T., Volunteer MNGRR, Webmaster RRNNE.net--
