[Intrepid] Atheros ath5k wireless driver not enabled by default

[Pjotr12345]

The Atheros ath5k wireless driver should be enabled by default! Please reverse this wrong decision.

Many first-time Ubuntu users will give up on Ubuntu, because of this. Their interests should weigh more heavily than the interests of upgraders with a manually installed Madwifi driver.

[schiemanski (schiemanski)]

I agree with this.
I use the ath_pci driver with a patch and it works but this is not really an option for "first time ubuntu users".

[ihc100 (arieht)]

Just returned to 8.04 because atheros was only working now and then.
Thank you for mking my remote control working out of the box.

[FredBezies (fredbezies-deactivatedaccount)]

Wontfix bug as it is documented in release notes ?

http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810#Atheros%20ath5k%20wireless%20driver%20not%20enabled%20by%20default

"While not installed by default, this linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic package is included on the Ubuntu 8.10 CD and DVD images for ease of installation."

Are release notes made - as we say in France - for dogs ?

[schiemanski (schiemanski)]

FredBezies, it seems that you don't known what the issue is...We know how we must act, but "first time ubuntu users" will not read those release notes ( of course)

[FredBezies (fredbezies-deactivatedaccount)]

You cannot know how wrong you are. Here is my wifi chipset.

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

"We know how we must act, but "first time ubuntu users" will not read those release notes ( of course)"

And that is THE issue. If you want to fight with maintainers, feel free to do so. I acted the same way at first, but I saw if was the way to go.

If think this bug is and will stay invalid. Feel free to disagree. But I finally approve this decision.

[stevenb (steven-gcc)]

I am one of those "first time ubuntu users", but I'm not exactly new to Linux (been using it for almost a decade). I even did read the release notes. I even found that package (linux-backports-modules-intrepid*) on my DVD. And I still have no clue what to do. Except, I suppose, be a first-and-last-time ubuntu user, and find me a distribution that does work out-of-the-box :-(

IMHO the release notes are not helpful at all without some description (or a pointer to that) about how to install that package.

[Lars Gjesse (larsgjesse)]

While both drivers may have their strengths/weaknesses, it is certainly a weakness of Ubuntu 8.10 that it ships with a driver which does not work out of the box.
I use Ubuntu 8.10 on a Thinkpad T60, and for me it was a really big nuisance that I couldn't make suspend/resume work properly, until I discovered bug #275692 (reload ath_pci module on resume). Certainly, the average first-time user isn't going to fix this problem by himself - he'll simply dump Ubuntu.
It is even more frustrating to find that this problem was reported 6 months earlier on Hardy (bug #194607) and it is still not fixed.
I replaced madwifi with ath5k, and it works immediately. No patches required to make suspend/resume work. ath5k also makes WPA authentication complete much faster, for some reason which I don't know.
At the bottom line, based on my experience with Ubuntu 8.10, I agree that shipping madwifi as default was a big mistake. Sadly, it has probably scared away a lot of potential users.
If bug #194607 had been resolved in Hardy, avoiding bug #275692 in Intrepid, ath_pci would probably have worked OK for most users. But really, Ubuntu - come on and address the bugs. It's sooo embarrasing to let these kinds of problems pass through several releases.

[Sander Jonkers (jonkers)]

FWIW:

Things seem to be have been solved in Jaunty / 9.04: A friend of mine live-booted Jaunty Alpha 5 on his eMachines D620 with the Atheros wifi chipset, and reported:

"Jep, bingo, 9.05 alpha-5 ouf-of-the-box. lsmod shows ath5k."

HTH

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Pjotr12345, thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Are you having a WiFi issue in a supported release? If so, could you please execute the following command, as it will automatically gather debugging information, in a terminal:
apport-collect 291576

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]