Ask Ubuntu General Room

3:04 PM

@Serg OK. I will ping you. It usually happens when I buy some new hardware ))

I do not develop wireless drivers. I sometimes patch them to build for specific kernels.

@cl-netbox Realtek is better than Broadcom. They allow to distribute their firmware and release open source driver. The drivers are poor, but at least it is possible to write better ones.

edwinksl

Python Fire, a library for automatically generating command line interfaces opensource.googleblog.com/2017/03/python-fire-command-line.html

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 Hats off ! :) Patching drivers is not something everybody is able to do. :)

Pilot6

@cl-netbox This is not too hard

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 True ... I would be glad if there would be an open source alternative for BDM ... but I use my old DELL machine mainly as a server which is connected via LAN ... on my main machine I have an intel 8260 wifi chip ... and there (as you know) we don't have any issues on whatever linux system we use at all. :)

Pilot6

The new Intel chips work much better on Linux than on Windows. That's rare.

cl-netbox

3:19 PM

@Pilot6 I couldn't do it ... hahaha ... :)

Serg

Atheros is pretty good,too

I've got one in this laptop I'm using right now

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 I agree ... extremely rare :)

@Serg open source drivers working out-of-the-box ?

Pilot6

New Atheros chips are not always well supported by the kernel. And also the QCA people do not maintain the kernel module, but develop themselves. They do not answer to my patch mails

But Intel kernel devs are really good.

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 Why don't they respond ? They should be glad that you try to contribute ... :)

Pilot6

I don't know. I've sent a patch that add support of one USE dongle. Maybe because they do not bother to support ath9k now.

cl-netbox

3:23 PM

@Serg I've seen users having trouble with them ... :)

Pilot6

There are users having trouble with everything.

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 True ! :)

Serg

 *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter
       vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
       logical name: wlan7
       version: 01
       serial: d0:53:49:3d:53:fd
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=4.4.0-65-generic firmware=N/A ip=10.50.1.126 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn

That's the one i have. driver ath9k, which is open source one, I believe

works like charm

Pilot6

Two days ago I bought a new laptop for my dad. It has rtl8723be chip. I prepared to have all sorts of trouble and was ready to use a driver from my PPA. But it works well without any actions on both 4.4 and 4.8 kernels. I am curious why everyone else has trouble?

@Serg This is an old good woring Atheros. I have some of those on a shelf, that I replaces with Intel ;-)

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 mostly the basic installation is the root cause ... many users install systems in a way that is unbelievable ... :D

Pilot6

3:26 PM

Installation ways do not affect how drivers work

I had only one trouble on the new laptop with a Huawei modem. It worked on every other comp, but that one. I spent two hours on debugging, and finally fixed by a udev rule. Still I have no idea why it works on identical software on all other comps.

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 well, if you see those many NVIDIA issues we are addressing ... basically all of them are due to an unprofessional way of installation methods. :)

@Pilot6 sometimes things simply don't work as expected ... :)

Pilot6

That is true. Everyone tries to install the newest drivers from a PPA. Have you seen that now they have bugs with Ubuntu? I am not mentioning SB and .run files )))

I never had any troubles with Nvidia either.

Serg

@Pilot6 Some modules require other modules to be installed as well, right ? So potentially, the modules that the computer required were a bit more dated/buggy than on the other computer

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 same with me ... never ever had a single issue ... on whatever machine I installed them ! :)

Pilot6

@Serg All module basically are in the kernel.

modules

The same Ubuntu with the same kernel on all comps

cl-netbox

3:33 PM

@Serg not necessarily ... when you install drivers the way it is intended you won't have issues ... when you fiddle around, then in most cases problems start to arise ! :)

@Serg and as @Pilot6 mentioned : if you start to fiddle around with .run files ... okay, then it is your (not your's ... the user's) own fault ! :)

Serg

@cl-netbox well, a lot of newbies don't even know how to fiddle in the first place. I think if you know how to mess around with hardware on the level of @Pilot6 or on the level of what you do with Nvidia, then you probably have better chance of solving the issue

Pilot6

All Windows user "know" how to install drivers. They go to a vendor's site and download it. ;-)

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 hahaha :D :D :D

@Serg the newbies should stick with : sudo apt install nvidia-(version) ... that's it ! :)

Serg

To be perfectly fair, Windows made people spoiled

Pilot6

I always install Nvidia drivers from the official repos and never have trouble

cl-netbox

3:45 PM

@Pilot6 same with me ... totally agree ! :)

Pilot6

@cl-netbox But you always suggest to add graphix-drivers/ppa )))

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 yes ... for newer GPUs ... the drivers from GPU Drivers PPA work flawlessly too ... I have tested all of them ... of course ONLY stable drivers ... never betas ! :)

Pilot6

Now they do not work well. I mean the 375 and 378 drivers from the PPA.

In most cases they really work. But I am to lazy to try.

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 I think Michael (Marley) does a pretty good job there ... me personally, I don't need drivers from the PPA because I'm not a gamer, but many users need them for playing "the newest" games ... that's the reason why I test them. :)

Pilot6

I play games, but I do not need "the newest drivers".

cl-netbox

3:54 PM

@Pilot6 Which GPU do you have ?

Pilot6

It is not very new. It is GTX 550 Ti.

But it is good enough for most of games

cl-netbox

@Pilot6 I have a GTX 860M in my SCHENKER XMG and a 8600M GT (hahaha) in my old DELL Inspiron - my wife plays built-in GNOME games with it ... and it still works ! :)

cl-netbox

4:07 PM

@Serg Sorry, a typo from me - I have an intel Wireless-AC 7260 (incl. Bluetooth) :
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: Wireless 7260
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: wlp3s0
version: bb
serial: 48:51:b7:15:a0:ea
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=4.8.0-30-generic firmware=17.352738.0 ip=192.168.178.21 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11

By the way @Pilot6 ... in my other old DELL machine, which I use mainly as a server I have an AMD Radeon HD 3650 - which works great with open source radeon drivers still ... :)

Serg

4:24 PM

AC 7260 , sounds very familiar. I may have seen a few questions about it around here

Serg

4:36 PM

Lol, a lady just tried to print something - didn't work. I come over, she does exactly same process - prints like charm. #printers_fear_me #IT_life #I_have_no_idea_what_i_am_doing (⌐■_■)

cl-netbox

@Serg :D :D :D

Byte Commander

4:49 PM

1

Q: Was kernel 4.4.0-65 update pulled back?

24 hours ago, Linux kernel 4.4.0-65 appeared as an update on Ubuntu 16.04 update servers. I did not do the update at that time because I was too busy to restart the system because of the update. I attempted to do the update 12 hours ago though and although all other updates appeared and install...

kernel

Does anyone know? ^

I installed that kernel update yesterday, but today it's no longer in the archives.

cl-netbox

@ByteCommander Why don't you switch to the HWE stack ? Good evening ! :)

Byte Commander

I am running on 4.8, but I kept linux-generic and the GA kernels just in case...

As long as I have enough space... why not? :)

cl-netbox

@ByteCommander ah okay ... I guess they found a bug and hence removed it from the servers. :)

Byte Commander

no, it is in xenial-proposed now

I suspect that they initially published it in the wrong repo section maybe...

cl-netbox

@ByteCommander or that ... happened by accident, also possible :)

cl-netbox

5:34 PM

@ByteCommander I checked something ... kernel 4.8-40 to which I upgraded yesterday on all machines are also not on the servers anymore ... seems they indeed found a critical bug !

Byte Commander

I'm still on 4.8.0-39, that should be fine

cl-netbox

@ByteCommander I have no issues with 40 though ... :)

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