Recent wireless problems in ubuntu and other linux distributions

[aaron]

Many people have recently reported problems using wireless adapters with recently installed or updated linux systems (especially Ubuntu Gutsy). I wasted many hours following false trails because of well-meaning but inaccurate recommendations on various web sites.

Eventually I worked out what had happened: the linux kernel developers have introduced new improved low level support for wireless in the kernel. This is incompatible with many older wireless drivers on linux systems. Driver developers are working on new versions that will be compatible, but they are planned for delivery on linux kernels 2.6.24, likely to become available in March 2008. There are some workarounds based on enhanced versions of older drivers and I eventually, after wasting many hours, got Belkin PCI wireless card, using the ralink 2500 chipset to work at a reasonable speed with WPA (which is significantly more secure than WEP) by following instructions for using the enhanced legacy RT2500 driver.

The story of my chase for answers and an account of how I got it to work is available on this web page, which I'll update from time to time.
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/laptop/ubuntu.html

Any corrections or suggestions for improvement will be welcome preferably via email.

If I make significant changes I'll try to remember to announce them here.

[Gina]

I found the RT2500 needed the interface "downing" then essid setting and the interface "upping" to make the wireless work.. This needs doing every time the system is booted. To facilitate this I wrote a script with desktop launcher which I run after booting. I suspect there may be a better way of doing this though.

I've just got the Belkin USB adapter working using the serialmonkey rt20xx project RT73 driver tarball. The interface needs "upping" at bootup to make wireless work.