jxself,
Oh, I just took out the plugged in cords attached to my router, there were
still a couple of smartphones and a Roku that were connected wirelessly. I
never thought about those…
I'm wondering if it would be worth the bother to try again? It might be
interesting to know, but it likely would never allow me to use that card here
or elsewhere since few WiFi's are ever that empty. If you want me to try
again, I will. Maybe it could confirm what happened to you?
Chris,
I did swap out the card. My bios had no passwords activated. It's just the
standard bios that came with the computer as far as I know, showing the logos
and the press the ThinkVantage button at boot up.
The Atheros card supposedly is an original Lenovo part (used $10) which I
assumed was whitelisted. I believe I saw it on Lenovo's list. It was a card
that was available for the ThinkPad X60s.
The card did not look "new", but neither did it look beat up or damaged in
any way. Seemed to be a true used part.
There was no problem putting it in, the Lenovo instruction book was clear. It
booted up without a problem, no restriction there, it just gets "stuck" when
trying to finalize a new connection and gives up with that deauthentication
by local choice reason 3.
I think I'll try the ThinkPenguin tiny USB. Maybe it will be faster than the
Etekcity USB? On my MacBook with its built in WiFi, my wireless download
speeds are around ~30m and with the Etekcity on the ThinkPad X60s, 12-15m.
Uploads are typically ~4m, but with the Etekcity often hardly 1m. I think the
Etekcity goes up to "g", no "n". Ethernet connected speeds on the X60s seem
very fast but I haven't checked them, think I'll do that.
I see the USB's you offer can be purchased with extended support; will
probably buy that too after going through this! Wireless connections aren't
always simple and they can break due to upgrades.
Knowing only what I've read and tried and not having a lot of technical
background re: GNU/Linux or its programs myself, my observation is that
sometime around kernel 2.6.30-something, the way that certain tasks were
handled internally changed. I remember reading something like sockets were
not flexible enough, so there was a new way to handle things.
Network Manager seems to have a history, rightly so I suppose, of wanting to
control "everything" and will rig up whatever it needs to get the job done.
When some underlying kernel things changed, some people had trouble with
their ath5k setups.
When wpa_supplicant is mixed in, apparently at times battling with Network
Manager, along with those kernel changes, even if the ath and ath5k drivers
themselves were ok, they perhaps could no longer "fit" nicely with all the
other code that had changed or been adapted. I think the ath5k driver project
ended in 2010. People moved on.
Many people had the error messages I had (shown earlier) and it seemed to
start for nearly everyone at the point of an upgrade. When they changed back
to an earlier version they were ok.
A couple of people had their physical WiFi switches shut off by accident and
a few, sometimes posting weeks or months later, said a later upgrade of one
thing or another fixed things for them.
Chris you may well have it correct that the chipset itself has issues,
perhaps worsened by various software changes over the years that re-broke
some earlier fixes. At one time, that Atheros card should have worked. It did
for other people, for years they say.
I wonder if anyone has such a setup working now? My guess is no, not
out-of-the-box. Maybe using older kernels or older methods to connect, but I
do not wish to go that route even if I had the brains to do it. Just looking
for a free software laptop experience similar to the corporate OS's, but
without the bloat and spyware and so on.
One final thing, in general. I looked at the usual online sources for
confirmation that my hardware and drivers would work, and on paper as they
say, there is no issue with my setup. Reality is different. A part of me
wanted to believe I guess that somehow hardware that was known to work with
GNU/Linux would "always" continue to be compatible. Like my hardware would
die one day but would not be put out to pasture because of software upgrades.
I am not complaining about this. Thinking about it now, it would be foolish
to try to encompass everything old and new into current software. This was
just a belief I had that doesn't seem to be true, and was unrealistic.
Thank you both for trying to help.
I'm very impressed with Trisquel and am enjoying learning how to use it. So
far, so good.
