[gentoo-user] WiFi on old Thinkpad

[gentoo-user] WiFi on old Thinkpad

[Peter Humphrey]

Afternoon all,

I'm reviving a somewhat elderly Thinkpad T61, installing from scratch after 
wiping out the old Windows XP setup. It has an Intel core-2 CPU.

What does the team think is the best way to get WiFi going? Is wpa-supplicant 
a good idea? That's what the handbook recommends, but I think I remember 
something like wicd being better.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] WiFi on old Thinkpad

[Michael]

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On Monday, 21 December 2020 13:21:59 GMT Peter Humphrey wrote:
> Afternoon all,
> 
> I'm reviving a somewhat elderly Thinkpad T61, installing from scratch after
> wiping out the old Windows XP setup. It has an Intel core-2 CPU.
> 
> What does the team think is the best way to get WiFi going? Is
> wpa-supplicant a good idea? That's what the handbook recommends, but I
> think I remember something like wicd being better.

The best way to get it going is to add the necessary driver + firmware, then 
use whichever front end you find easiest for you to manage associations and 
authentication mechanisms and passphrases with various APs.

There's networkmanager, invariably dragged in by all big DEs these days, so 
you can enable this if you are running KDE/Gnome.  A simpler application is 
connman.  I always used wpa_supplicant and whenever I need a GUI I use wpa_cli 
with its GUI - but it can also be run on the CLI.

From what I know wicd has been abandonware for years now.  There may be other 
applications offering the same function, it would be interesting to read what 
others are using.

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[gentoo-user] Re: WiFi on old Thinkpad

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-12-21, Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk> wrote:

> What does the team think is the best way to get WiFi going? Is
> wpa-supplicant a good idea?

I've never used anything else.

> That's what the handbook recommends, but I think I remember
> something like wicd being better.

Better how?

--
Grant

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: WiFi on old Thinkpad

[Peter Humphrey]

On Monday, 21 December 2020 15:08:20 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2020-12-21, Peter Humphrey <peter@prh.myzen.co.uk> wrote:
> > What does the team think is the best way to get WiFi going? Is
> > wpa-supplicant a good idea?
> 
> I've never used anything else.
> 
> > That's what the handbook recommends, but I think I remember
> > something like wicd being better.
> 
> Better how?

Easier to use, more flexible, less constrained by config settings, ... Something 
like that, but it was a long time ago.

-- 
Regards,
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] WiFi on old Thinkpad

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Mon, 21 Dec 2020 13:21:59 +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote:

> What does the team think is the best way to get WiFi going? Is
> wpa-supplicant a good idea? That's what the handbook recommends, but I
> think I remember something like wicd being better.

Last time I looked, wicd was dead with the author recommending
NetworkManager, hardly ideal for old hardware. I'd probably stick with
using wpa_supplicant directly, but you could try connman.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

Oxymoron: Clearly Misunderstood.

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Re: [gentoo-user] WiFi on old Thinkpad

[Matt Connell (Gmail)]

On Mon, 2020-12-21 at 13:21 +0000, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> Is wpa-supplicant a good idea? That's what the handbook recommends, but I think I remember 
> something like wicd being better.

It depends on your needs.

If you're only going to connect to one or two networks, using
wpa_supplicant and learning wpa_cli will be managable.  The Arch wiki
has an excellent step-by-step wpa_cli example.

However, if you're travelling from place to place and hopping networks,
then you may find that kind of maintenance tedious and opt to use
wpa_gui instead.  It certainly isn't fancy but it is featureful and
user-friendly.