Wifi issue on Intrepid (worked before)

Ok, long story short:
I Installed Intrepid Alpha 5 from CD, and WiFi didn't work.
I connected it to the net via LAN, did an update/upgrade, Wifi worked great.
Today I wanted to customize my panels a little and removed the notification area (by mistake).
The nm-apple dissapeared, but the WiFi was working.
I rebooted, no more WiFi.
I did a sudo NetworkManager, then the wifi started to work again.
Without restarting the computer, I found out that the notification area missing caused the nm-applet not to be loaded at startup, so I added the notification area, which caused the nm-applet to work.
After restarting the computer, nm-applet spent some time trying to get the WiFi connection to work, but it didn't work. Now each time I try to connect, it will either do nothing, or less than a second after I press conenct it tells me that the wifi was disconnected(WTF!!).

I am about to give up on Linux and fork some cash to Bill for XP or Vista (I am figguring that my time is more important than the cost of Vista). BTW, first time I used Linux was 10 years ago, so I am not really a n00b, but this is becoming ridiculous.

 

If you've upgraded to kernel 2.6.27-3, there's been some sort of glitch and right now, the wifi card isn't supported.

As for whether to go to MS or not--the Linpus Lite works moderately well, especially for the simple needs for which the machine was designed. As for Ubuntu's quality control, it should be a lot better. It isn't.

Ubuntu and Fedora both seem to be broken a lot of the time.
On the other hand, the onelinux.org's version of Ubuntu for the Aspire One works pretty well.

Of course, if you go to Windows, you'll probably run into other things that won't work--it seems to me that I usually have fonder memories of the system I'm not using, until I go back to it and see why I left it in the first place.

 

The wifi worked fine for quite a while, so it's not the kernel (I didn't do any update since I got it working). Furthermore, nm-tool sees the wifi card as working properly (but not connected).
I would venture to guess that NetworkMonitor did something bad, but I am not an expert.

I tried XP on it a few days ago, and it was pretty slow, but at least I can install more software on it. Linpus also failed me, I got everything working (Opera, Skype, Bluetooth, a few games, etc.), then the wifi connection dissapeared after I ran out of battery and the disk wasn't umounted properly.
I am really dissapointed that for 10 years I am trying Linux about once every 2 years, and it's still not 'desktop ready' for most of the people (and I am a programmer, and my applications are cross paltform, so I do have some experience about how things should work).

 

Troubleshooting it would probably, as you say, take more time than you wish to give it. The kernel upgrade was the quick answer, (and the one that has been hitting the most people--not necessarily here, where it does seem many wind up going back to Linpus, but on other forums.)

If you're not quite ready to go to MS, I'd definitely try the onelinux.org's spin on it, (but wouldn't try to upgrade.)

As for Linux being ready for the desktop--it depends upon one's needs, of course.
Most of my work is with Linux servers and for my home desktop needs, I find that I only need MS for a VPN client for my company that doesn't work with Linux. So, I run an old Win2k in VirtualBox.

It gets closer, and one has to give Mr. Shuttleworth credit--he's done an excellent job of popularizing Ubuntu, and for many people, it does work out of the box.

 

Ok, I am going to bite the bullet and reinstall the whole god damn thing again, I'm figguring out that it's going to take less time to do it (about 4 hours) than trying to restore my wifi...

 

Didn't work :/
Perhaps last time I was just lucky and got the right packages. Now the symptoms are slightly different, I think it is the nm-applet's fault that it can't save my password even after I just created a connection. Either way, I am done with Ubuntu for now, and I will be trying Mandriva 2009 RC1 (I had good experiences with Mandriva before).

 

If you don't have the time to debug then an alpha release is not the best option. Wifi is rock solid if you install hardy as per the wiki.

Allan

EDIT - I am running Petaramesh's 2.6.27 kernel on top of Hardy no problems