Yes, rt2500 is very free software friendly, but that does not automatically unfortunately mean that the drivers would be top-notch. The current problem is, that only the so called "Legacy" "BETA" drivers work reliably, but they don't support features needed by network-manager. On the other hand, the "rt2x00" driver, which should replace all the current rt2400/rt2500/rt2570/rt61/rt73 drivers, is not yet stable.
So basically the whole WLAN situation on Linux is a bit unfortunate, with some chipsets not working at all, most requiring non-free firmware blobs to be included in the distribution, and even the few potentially fully free solutions do not have good enough drivers. Plus the fact that kernel side things are a bit fluctuating. But as always, things are improving - with the DeviceScape WLAN framework in kernel finally approaching, and many drivers finally maturing (like rt2x00, broadcom, zd1211rw), I'd finally see Ubuntu 7.10 to have chances to have relatively nice support out of the box for also other cards besides Intel's, albeit it requires those firmware files still for most cards other than rt2x00. In Ubuntu 7.04, I have my ZD1211-based card now finally working with the default zd1211rw driver rewritten from scratch by the community. Also some of the Broadcom users are reporting they can now use the GPL driver instead of ndiswrapper hack. Granted both of those need the firmware files, but still requiring firmwares is a lesser harm than something non-free running on the computer CPU itself. That said, Ubuntu really should use the 1.1.0-b4 + patches driver (ie. latest legacy driver for rt2500) that Debian also uses, from http://packages.qa.debian.org/r/rt2500.html . It works reliably, but just needs that network manager is not used (AFAIK). Probably no-one in the Ubuntu core team has devoted enough though to this matter, and the fact that network manager was decided to enable by default complicates things. -- rt2500 in feisty: problem & solution https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/78037 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is the bug contact for Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
