Non-Geeks Installing Ubuntu: Why Linux Needs Better Wireless Support
My day job revolves around early-modern European history, which I study in graduate school. While most of my fellow graduate students know very much about obscure dead people, computers are generally not their forte: many of them remain unsure of the difference between Microsoft Word and Microsoft Windows, for example.
I was thus quite surprised to hear a colleague mention recently that she purchased an MSI Wind and installed Ubuntu on it. (She would have bought the Linux edition to begin with, she said, but found it nearly impossible to find any mention of the Linux selection on MSI’s website—a fact that the company ought to take into consideration.)
She has no background as a computer nerd and decided to give Linux a try, she explained, only because she’d grown tired of fighting the daily war against Windows malware.
The fact that my classmate decided of her own volition to give Ubuntu a shot is very significant—it demonstrates the inroads that Linux has made among the “human beings” (i.e. the non-geeks) among us, as well as the increasing recognition that it’s not just for computer nerds anymore.
Her success in independently installing and running her Linux system with few problems, despite her total lack of Unix experience, also attests to Ubuntu’s ability to be a distribution for the masses.
That said, the one glaring problem experienced by my colleague with her shiny and sleek new Ubuntu system was wireless. The Wind comes with a Realtek RTL8187B wireless chipset, a relatively new device. Although drivers for it were integrated into the Linux wireless stack with the stable release of the 2.6.27 kernel earlier this month, these will never reach Hardy, and it’s unclear whether they’ll be merged at this late date into the Intrepid kernel. Consequently, compiling Realtek’s Linux driver from source is the only way to get wireless working on the Wind.
While compiling kernel modules may seem trivial to experienced Linux users, it is hardly so for someone who’s never touched Linux before. Even though there is ample documentation online explaining the process, Ubuntu neophytes are not likely to be able to find such information, let alone readily apply it.
My classmate spent several hours trying to get the wireless working on her own, to no avail. This is not a problem unique to the Wind: five minutes browsing the Ubuntu forums turns up numerous posts along the lines of “how to install wireless driver?” on a wide range of hardware.
In cases where native drivers exist and have been around long enough to be merged into the kernel stack, Linux wireless is easier than in Windows—it “just works,” as Steve Jobs likes to say, without the user ever having to think about it.
But for the numerous chipsets that lack out-of-the-box support, wireless too often becomes the deal breaker for individuals trying to make the switch to Ubuntu. If I hadn’t been able to help my classmate figure it out, she likely would have uninstalled Linux, as a netbook without wireless access is a plane without wings.
This is why projects like the Linux wireless stack, which has finally centralized and standardized Linux wireless drivers, remain so important. Campaigning by Linux users, companies and advocates for better cooperation by hardware vendors and more timely releases of Linux wireless drivers is also crucial. If even a netbook made by an ostensibly Linux-friendly company lacks out-of-the-box wireless, the Year of the Linux Desktop clearly remains quite far away.
WorksWithU Contributing Blogger Christopher Tozzi is a PhD student at a major U.S. university. Tozzi has extensive hands-on experience with Ubuntu Server Edition and Ubuntu Desktop Edition. WorksWithU is updated multiple times per week. Don’t miss a single post. Sign up for our RSS and Twitter feeds (available now) and newsletter (launching January 2009).
Hear hear…
I couldn’t agree more.
As a quick note though- I ran the somewhat nerve-racking “gksu update-manager -d” command and went through the Hardy to Intrepid-RC transformation.
Voila, my dreaded Broadcom bcm4318 wireless chipset sprang to life. And with the updated wireless stack that Intrepid boasts, it sees wireless points that I never saw before, neither from Linux nor windows.
(Also has actually functional dual head support withouth third part apps or drivers, but that’s for a different discussion. Both of these items are slated for an upcoming post. Stay tuned. Shameless plug over now. Thanks.)
And yes, Ubuntu is making great inroads, as you said. The IT company I work for, a die-hard Windows shop, our Help Desk engineer recently started asking me about Ubuntu and how to dual boot, whether to just install natively, etc. He wanted to “try another OS, and it was the most likely candidate.” Ubuntu’s also making some rumor waves in the company as an alternative because of the economy ripples we’ve seen lately.
Here’s hoping the momentum continues.
Wondering why Ubuntu was installed on the MSI Wind? Does it not already come with Linux? Wikipedia says it has SUSE Linux. Does that distro allow the wireless to operate?
I use a GSM broadband under Fedora 9, everything is fine.
re:Jack Fuller
MSI Wind is available in both Linux and WinXP versions, but Linux versions have been reported to be less available in the States.
I agree that better wireless support is needed, but it has improved so much in the last year or so I think it is becoming a non-issue. I am in a similar position as Tony, I upgraded and had another option for my broadcom card and now it works better in Ubuntu than in Windows. I never expected that day to come. You can never have too much hardware support I don’t suppose but from my experience Ubuntu still kicks the pants off of Vista for out of the box support.
Wesley: I agree that Ubuntu overall is much better than Windows for out-of-the-box support. I’ve never used Vista, but I remember from my XP days that you were lucky if even the ethernet worked worked on a fresh install without you having to hunt around for drivers first.
However, most non-geeks, who have never installed a Windows system from scratch, are unable to appreciate the hardware support built into the Linux kernel. They assume (in my experience) that because their computers came with drivers etc. already configured by the hardware vendor, these things must magically ‘just work’ in Windows. Not so, but the vast majority of people never have the chance to realize this.
Chris, Exactly. I think that is why it is great to see Ubuntu being installed on new hardware people don’t have to go through that if they are not the most technically minded.
I recently installed Ubuntu and Vista on the same system the difference was amazing. The Ubuntu install took about 30 minutes and I was up and running, the Vista install even with “Vista Ready” hardware took me 2-3 hours to get all the drivers downloaded, updated, CD found, etc.
My current laptop came with a “Powered by Ubuntu Linux” sticker. From manufacturer.
So yes, I am enjoying the bliss of everything working. Intel wireless, nvidia graphics, mmm…
“Wondering why Ubuntu was installed on the MSI Wind? Does it not already come with Linux? Wikipedia says it has SUSE Linux. Does that distro allow the wireless to operate?”
The modified distros that come on several netbooks do have the wireless drivers installed. But some of the other “tweaks” to make the distro more “friendly” are actually very annoying and they usually are provided without documentation or even recovery media. I had the same experience with an Acer Aspire One. I removed the “crippled” version of Xandros that came with it and installed Xubuntu – then had to go through the whole process of finding a new MADwifi driver and loading it. Lots of other tweaks too – but many have become reduntant with kernel updates.
I actually don’t think the manufacturers have done Linux a great favor with some of the bizarre and half-baked implementations they are delivering. Let’s hope Dell and HP, working with the Ubuntu Mobile people, pay more attention.
I agree. The entire “Linux isn’t ready” argument is hollow precisely because any shortcoming of a particular implementation lays solely on the shoulders of whichever manufacturer installed it. Because any maker is free to take the building blocks and do with it what they choose doesn’t necessarily mean that they’ll build a nice house, per se.
MSI saw “four times as many returned units of Linux” because they used a bad implementation. (Nevermind the lack of numbers attached to that fact. They don’t say anything about actual percentages.)