this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 37 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (5 children)

Lemmy needs polls. The last time I had problems with WIFI drivers was... 15 years ago? On a laptop bought in a supermarket that originally came with Windows Vista. Oh, and the raspberry pi - fuck raspberry pis. They can't pick wifi module worth shit.

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I mean it isn't Linux fault, but I wanted to install balenaos on my RaspberryPi and they don't support a WiFi chip in their kernel. Without WiFi the whole idea won't work for me. And I don't want to buy a new WiFi usb only because they don't want to add the drivers.

My attempts to add it to the kernel and build it myself failed so far.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 10 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I'm not faulting linux, I'm faulting the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Linux is their main operating system and they haven't picked a good WIFI hardware module for years. Dunno if the new raspberrypi 4 is better, but I'm not paying to find out.

[–] LufyCZ@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Quick correction, the Pi5 is the new one

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago

Thanks. I'm out of the loop.

[–] linuxdweeb@lemm.ee 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

All single board computers have driver problems because they require custom kernel forks that can't or don't get mainlined for whatever reason (usually laziness), but Raspberry PI is actually the best when it comes to that stuff.

So when you buy an SBC, you need to ask yourself: will the company continue to develop/update/patch their custom kernel fork now that they shipped? Or will they just abandon it and move on to the next product? 9 times out of 9.01, it's the latter.

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I am running a pi 1. No WiFi included. The usb I have worked for everything so far

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

That's the only thing that worked for me too. The inbuilt WiFi is useless.

[–] Johanno@feddit.de 1 points 9 months ago

On pi 4 with raspbian no issues. Didn't try a different os on that yet

[–] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub 0 points 9 months ago

Try Void, maybe it has the adequate firmware binary blobs... worth a try 🤷.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Had problems about 3 years ago, got a new laptop from work and the WiFi hardware was too new and didn't have support in the kernel yet. Took a year or something, maybe less, until it worked.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

For new hardware, it's no surprise when it doesn't work out of the box as most drivers are written for windows first. That's not a fault of linux.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Yep, just saying I had problems.

[–] Sowhatever@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Raspberry, seriously? What problems are you seeing?

I have a raspberry pi 3 acting as a 5GHz access point for as long as it's been on the market, I can remember one time I had to restart it because of some wonkiness. About a dozen others as clients, never had an issue there either, fast and stable enough.

All using the default os (raspbian first, raspberry os later).

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I've had 3 raspberry pis (1,2,3) and none have had stable WiFi. After an hour or two it would drop and the logs would get spammed with some error that I can't remember. Might be this issue wlan freezes in raspberry pi 3/PiZeroW (Not 3B+) . Similar issue Every two hours, like clockwork: "wpa_supplicant[313]: nl80211: kernel reports: key addition failed".

After that, I gave up on WiFi on Raspberries and used LAN, but they are so underpowered... my nextcloud instance took ages to do anything, XBMC (now Kodi) was slow and couldn't render videos > 720p (it was struggling with 720p honestly), even a simple audio proxy over bluetooth (forward bluetooth audio from phone to speaker) barely functioned as the bluetooth cut out or it was janky as hell.

It's easier to put a old phone as a server than a raspberrypi.

[–] Sowhatever@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Might be some AP incompatibility maybe, I've never seen those.

XBMC didn't have drivers for video acceleration, but the raspberry pi 1 was able to play 1080p flawlessly if you used omxplayer.

Now kodi has the drivers included and the 4 can even play 4k up to certain bit rate.

The new ones are too expensive tho, a used NUC is a much better deal.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 2 points 9 months ago

Might be some AP incompatibility maybe, I’ve never seen those.

Lucky you. Tried 4 different routers --> same issue.

I gave up on RasPis long ago.

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Welcome to 90% of all the anti-Windows arguments made on here by Linux users.

[–] onlinepersona@programming.dev 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I'm not sure I follow... are you saying Linux users judge windows by very old problems?

[–] 0x4E4F@infosec.pub -1 points 9 months ago

There are some oddball cards out there that need the linux firmware xxx (insert manufacturer instead of xxx) binary blobs in order to work, but yes, those cards are rare nowadays and mostly older hardware uses that (as you mentioned, hardware from 10+ years ago).