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Comment by likeclockwork | Hacker News Reader

How is it that for the last decade I've been running Linux on whatever decent machines I was primarily using and whatever random garbage I could get my hands on and I haven't had any of these problems that people are perpetually complaining about?

Are these people using some kind of exotic hardware? Am I just really lucky?

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Just FYI, this response has about the same validity that refutation of online anonymity / pseudonymity as a non-issue does: simply because you're not experiencing a problem doesn't mean others aren't, and doesn't make their frustrations any less valid.

I've used Unix for over 25 years, Linux for over 17. It's my platform of choice, I very, very rarely use anything else.

And my Thinkpad T520i listing a "03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Wireless-N 1000 [Condor Peak]" under lspci and running Debian GNU/Linux jessie/sid has _never_ had reliable WiFi, and I run it essentially 24/7 with a Cat5 cable plugged into hardwire networking.

I've tried network manager, wicd-cli, wicd-curses, and other tools. I can see networks. I cannot connect to them. Plugging a cable in solves the problem far faster than futzing with a nonintuitive, low-feedback/diagnostics interface.

So yeah, you're probably lucky.

And with that impetus, I've just set up ye olde /etc/network/interfaces configuration, and I've got a WPA2 connection running. One less cord to trip over.

Why I could never get network manager nor wicd to work ... I don't know.

Yay, I'm lucky too. Not only that but 2 out of 3 MacBook Pros in my office do very badly with WiFi - slow to connect (my android phone is 10x faster) & they drop at the first sign of a flaky signal.

The most robust laptop I've had on wifi was a Samsung running Fedora 20. Very fast to connect and never dropped. The pre-installed Windows 7 dropped continuously and often failed to connect.

I suspect the "issue" may be very hardware dependent.

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