[Ipw2100-devel] 2200 + FC5? bugs where? yum updates?

[Robert N. <rob...@ya...>]

Hi, there. Sorry to disturb what seems to be a developer's list, but I had a "meta question" which you could probably answer. 
 
 I'm on fedora core 5 and I have intel 2915 on my thinkpad. 
 
 I've had lots of problems getting wifi to work, and also troubleshooting it when it does not work. 
 
 I see that the ipw2200 project has been going on for a while, and there is some decent documentation (including Bill Moss's FC specific documentation: http://www.ces.clemson.edu/linux/fc2-ipw2200.shtml )
 
 However, in the fedora world, a lot of users are pretty much flailing about. (You can view it on the networking section of fedora forum http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=10). For me,  I've been troubleshooting a series of failures over a 2 week period. 
 
 (see for example my post http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=115498 or 
 this one http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=101489 ). 
 
 For me personally,  I've gotten it to work, then it stops working. Then I get it to work, and then it stops working, all for a different reason. A lot of this is intermittent, and not helped by the fact I am relatively new to troubleshooting network stuff. (although I've learned a lot so far; I probably could write a short  troubleshooting guide  by now). 
 
 Here's my questions: 
 
 1)I gather that these problems should be reported somewhere. Should hardware bugs like this be filed to your group or to the fedora distribution?  
 
 2)Obviously users would prefer a solution that involves yum or their distribution's package manager instead of compiling drivers/applying updates and patches. Doing these things yourself involves  a lot of housework. In a general sense, is the method suggested by Bill Moss's more likely to work correctly than an rpm firmware solution?  Is it easier to maintain? 
 
 3)My experience is limited to fedora 5. Is there any reason to believe that users of other distributions might be less likely to experience the kinds of problems I have been experiencing? 
 
 Thanks. 
 
 Robert nagle 
  

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