I’ve just installed openSUSE 11.1 64-bit as I found 11.2 unreliable regards wireless networking. Don’t ask - long story and couldn’t get resolved.
Anyway…now have 11.1 up and running, and it’s great - except that my wireless is giving me a problem…
When I am in my study, I can connect wirelessly to the net - the wireless router is in the same room. My problems start when I move the laptop to another location. I have to use a wireless range expander and am doing so now (but on Windows 7). When I use openSUSE, it can see the wireless network but won’t connect. Passphrase etc are the same - the wireless extender just boosts the signal.
Like I said, it works fine on W7 but not openSUSE - and yet when I go back to the study, everything seems fine.
I think I’ve solved the issue - I am now back using openSUSE for this message, via the range expander.
Firstly, I installed WICD - I’d heard that was preferrable to Network Manager ( see
http://en.opensuse.org/Wicd#Installation/HTML for instructions). I got the connection working, but when I moved the laptop, the SSID changed to something like /0x/0x/0x..... - just as it did with Network Manager. I think that the real SSID gets hidden by the range expander. I've now connected to that network and everything seems fine. I'm not sure that the problem was actually with Network Manager, but I've had problems in the past with it, so seemed safest to blame it. I didn't persevere with it and don't intend going back to it as long as WICD works.
This may be teaching your granny to suck eggs, but thought I'd put my solution on in case anyone else encounters this.
I may have spoken too soon - I tried moving the laptop again and the range expander didn’t let me connect (although the dishwasher was on and the electromagnetic radiation may have affected the signal - that has happened before). However, Windows can still connect.
I don’t like my internet access being worse than that available under Windows, despite the hardware being the same. Are there any suggestions for resolving this? It has boiled down to the same problem with both Network Manager and WICD, so I’m guessing that there are other issues afoot, rather than NM.
As you chose to discard all the advancements in wireless between 2.6.27 and
2.6.31 by using 11.1 rather than 11.2, your problems may be self inflicted.
The “improvements” you refer to resulted in the wireless network dropping entirely, at irregular intervals, when I was next to the router. The only way to reconnect was to reboot. Sometimes, I could be connected for hours, at other times minutes. I tried a variety of solutions, such as changing the router channel, kernel upgrades and so on. None of these worked.
e the range expander issue, I have found 2.6.27 to be far more stable in terms of wireless connectivity. I can live with being out of range; what I can’t work with is the connection dropping arbitrarily - when I’m on-line, I want to stay on-line.
Another issue I had was that VirtualBox needed to be re-installed after each reboot. I cannot state categorically that this was a kernel issue or an issue with 11.2; however, I can state that it works fine in 11.1.
FYI, LinuxFormat magazine recommends avoiding 11.2 and sticking with 11.1 until 11.3 comes out, owing to the number of problems in 11.2. It seems I’m not alone…
Well, given the problems I’ve had (some distro-related, most self-inflicted), I still prefer Linux over Windows. It feels like a real OS. I’ll keep at it.
Have you tried a boosting antenna on your wlan box, it may be a way to bypass the extender and have a direct connection to the laptop. As to the 11.2 issue, I would reinstall and continue to use WICD, I know a lot of people have good results with NM, but for me it has been a shocker.
