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0e1f616
(Get the code!)
>> it's apparently never worked for me at home or at various friends
>> houses, and only once worked when I travelled to Germany for a
>> sprint.
> is that having a visible impact for users? like was your computer
> not able to connect to some access point?
Personally, I've never encountered issues with WiFi on a Pi. However,
firstly it's worth noting the vast majority of pis around my house are
connected via ethernet and, secondly that my broadband connection
typically hovers around 60-80Mbps, so the 54Mbps max bandwidth of
802.11g is "fast enough" that anything more wouldn't be noticed
anyway.
Notably, this also means I *don't* use bonded 5GHz channels in my home
setup. The reason I mention this is that, over the last few years
there's been a slow (but steady) drum-beat of complaints about WiFi on
the Pi when using Ubuntu [1][2][3][4] (some of those are comments from
the same bug, but it seems to be one that people land on when googling
this for Ubuntu).
[1]: https:/
[2]: https:/
[3]: https:/
[4]: https:/
> if that's the consequence of the issue it is a bit surprising that
> we got no user report of the type of 'my laptop isn't able to
> connect to my AP anymore since the upgrade to the new LTS' no? or is
> the issue somehow specific to raspi devices?
The complaint usually isn't "I can't connect to my AP anymore". It's
usually "my WiFi connection is slow" (which is obviously a much harder
problem to debug and address) but this does appear to be a problem
specific to the Pi.
Mostly though, this comes up on IRC, and it's a safe bet that the
person involved has a 5GHz setup, sometimes with bonded channels.
Obviously bonded channel setups require more (typically adjacent)
channels and this makes them particularly susceptible to poor
performance when the region code hasn't been set (and the channels, or
channel mitigations are limited). With pure 5GHz APs (no 2.4GHz
channels at all) we've also had reports of no connectivity.
One other (anecdotal) observation is that despite RaspiOS having a
considerably larger installed base of Ubuntu on the Pi, WiFi issues
rarely crop up there. Notably, RaspiOS prompts for a wifi regulatory
region in its first time setup. There are several other differences,
but under the covers we're using the same firmware, and wpa-supplicant
is ultimately in charge of the WiFi connection on both OS'.
Given 5GHz setups are only likely to become more common in future
(802.11ac, which the Pi 3+ and 4 are compatible with, is notably 5GHz
only [5]) my suspicion is this will only become more important in the
coming years.
[5]: https:/