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by SanjayMehta 93 days ago
I used to but driver support for wireless devices was so inconsistent I had to move to Linux.
2 comments

That's unintentionally hilarious -- some of us remember 15-20 years ago when flaky support for wireless devices was the biggest reason people would decide Linux wasn't ready for desktop yet and avoid switching from Windows to Linux. (Well, Windows to dual-boot -- Windows users were never fully willing to let go of the video games angle at the time.)
It is hilarious. When I installed SLS 1.0 I had to assemble the machine to match the drivers available. 92 or 93. I vaguely remember I needed a SCSI hard disk.

Remember that most machines back then were Ethernet, not WiFi.

First wifi device I used was a PCMCIA card from Lucent, claimed 2mbps speeds. Still have it somewhere. I don't think I ever got Linux or BSD to work.

> Remember that most machines back then were Ethernet, not WiFi.

Not "most" -- all.

802.11 networking was standardised in 1997.

The first versions to really see significant mass adoption were 802.11b and then 802.11a in 1999.

https://hewlettpackard.github.io/wireless-tools/Linux.Wirele...

Linux had better WiFi 20 years ago than FreeBSD has today.

I still prefer FreeBSD.

installed it on my n100 last night. it didn't detect my USB mouse.