Wifi Woes? Does Usb Wifi Work?

[Prometheus]

In this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKKMj37Psd8 EvilDragon says internet works fine with "USB-net"

If memory serves, ED was using a wired connection back then. The "usbnet" that was mentioned most likely relates to this driver for USB Ethernet devices (presumably like this one).

 

[parag0n]

What happened to noikia's wl12xx mac80211 driver that was being touted a few months back? Has it hit problems, or is that the one being used?

 

[WizardStan]

I think it would be a big mistake to release the Pandora without decent wifi out of the box.
When we first pre-ordered, it was with the knowledge that it would be software incomplete. I specifically remember them saying that the 3D drivers wouldn't be ready, and vaguely recall something about the WiFi as well, though I could be mistaken.
And yet you pre-ordered then, presumably. What has changed between then and now that you went from "software incomplete is fine" to "no wifi driver is a no go"?

 

[Monk]

I think it would be a big mistake to release the Pandora without decent wifi out of the box.
When we first pre-ordered, it was with the knowledge that it would be software incomplete. I specifically remember them saying that the 3D drivers wouldn't be ready, and vaguely recall something about the WiFi as well, though I could be mistaken.
And yet you pre-ordered then, presumably. What has changed between then and now that you went from "software incomplete is fine" to "no wifi driver is a no go"?

I see this particular quibble kicked around a lot, so while I cannot answer definitively for Miner49er, may I have a more general stab at the question?

I would assume that when we initially pre-ordered, that was in October with a pretty confident prediction of delivery in November or December with thing slike 3D and WiFi (I agree, I don't recall the details but WiFi seemed to be sketchy), the idea presented was that we would expect the OS/drivers/software in general to be updated very shortly afterwards - weeks or months rather than months or years.

You know how if someone gets convicted of a crime and a sentence is handed down, the time they spend in jail after conviction is shortened by the amount of time they have already spent incarcerated before/during the trial? It's a bit like that - the OP team SEEM to have already used up the "brand new slightly twitchy" time. We were lead to believe November/December and that patches to fix any issues would follow promptly. Call that an estimation of January/February. We're now in June. Why SHOULDN'T we wish, or even expect, for drivers to be working pretty well by now?

 

[WizardStan]

We've got working 3D now, do we not? Perhaps the January estimate you're making would have been way off the mark, and really would have been a July/August thing.

 

[God Ginrai]

Why SHOULDN'T we wish, or even expect, for drivers to be working pretty well by now?

Because WiFi has always been a bitch on Linux. (Note: It has become much better in the recent years, but I know a lot of people who have had trouble getting it set up)

-God Ginrai

 

[Squidge]

I seem to recall it being said that Wifi drivers are available and do work. However, those drivers are closed source, and so someone needs to either create a shim or write drivers that are open source. I believe the later was chosen. This doesn't mean they are being written from scratch however, as similar drivers are already written and open source.They may already work, but perhaps only have command line tools to configure them.

Whichever, I'd be very suprised if the Pandora shipped without any drivers at all. Maybe shipped without a gui interface, but not without drivers.

It all depends how much time is needed on other aspects.

 

[valhalla]

In this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKKMj37Psd8 EvilDragon says internet works fine with "USB-net"

If memory serves, ED was using a wired connection back then. The "usbnet" that was mentioned most likely relates to this driver for USB Ethernet devices (presumably like this one"].[/quote]USB-net may also refer to the ability to connect via USB OTG to a PC and use its internet connection.