[SATLUG] Why Ubuntu is the best distribution for wifi-enabled computers

[Sean Carolan]

Ubuntu includes the madwifi binary drivers for Atheros based wifi
chipsets.  This may not seem like a big deal, but it's huge for people
whose only convenient way to connect to the internet is via wifi.
Yes, you could download a driver .rpm or .deb on another box (or from
within Windows on the same machine), copy to a USB stick, load them on
your box and try to configure it by hand . . .

But what if you're a newb, and you don't know that you need
madwifi-kmdl and madwifi-hal-kmdl as well as madwifi?  Now you have to
either reboot or walk over to that other computer to download another
package, put it on the usb stick, etc.  And if you can get this far,
how do you choose from the 50 different drivers that have been
compiled for the last 5 kernel revisions on 32 and 64 bit
architectures?  A Linux power user could figure this out with the
uname command, but he shouldn't *have* to.

Ubuntu handles the situation well by including binary drivers but
giving the end user the option to use them or not.  It's as easy as
clicking on the "restricted drivers" menu option and checking a box.

Why doesn't Red Hat (or Fedora) do this?  Are there any other "free as
in beer" distributions that include wifi and graphics drivers this
way?

Disclaimer:  I use Ubuntu on my work laptop, and CentOS 5 on my home
workstation.