Monday, September 10, 2012

Leave Fedora, and more than pain left

I got a Lenovo IdeaPad laptop last week with Intel i5 processor. As been tortured by Linux with NVidia Optiums for a long time, I highly expect to have a well-drived Linux machine. In the past few years, Intel has been spending a significant amount of efforts on Linux and collaborate with Linux developers to provide up-to-date drivers to the community. Been affected by Intel`s reputation, I choose this Core Ivy Bridge i5 machine without hesitation.

After finishing the installation of new Fedora 17, I found there is not network interface, and only a local loopback. After few investigation, I found the wireless hardware actually is a Intel 2200N, and as far as I know, those drivers have been integrated into kernel 2.4. Then, after searching for 2 hours, what happened became more and more clear. It seems a bug only happened between Ivy Bridge processor and Intel wireless lan. So threads said that a conflict may caused by “acer_mod”, but in my case, no mod related acer is loaded. Then I do not know what to do next.

Then I connect wired lan to my laptop and plan to update the kernel, which may bring some good luck… But LAN also do not work. Atheros LAN also need driver! Ok, at that time, I gave up! I think if Fedora cannot handle it, why do not I try Debian/Ubuntu. So I download Ubuntu 12.04, and then, the wireless works.

I have to say that, as a fun of Fedora for 7 years, Fedora has been more and more inactive. Comparing to Ubuntu community, supports, user experiences and OS itself all have felled behind. I love Fedora, but I have to give it up and use Ubuntu. It may be a good choice, but feel complicated.