Meanwhile at Linux HQ

exp(x) said:

Another CSG Linux hate-fest. How constructive.

It's the Linux-fanboys who aren't in any way constructive here.
Business as usual.

If 'Works for me. If it doesn't for you, you are an idiot' is the only response one can hope to get what do you expect? Be happy in your small corner of utter geek-ness - but if you ever want to hope that the situation changes - behave differently.

Bucket said:

Oh shit, I had no idea that I could put files on a flash drive and load them during the install. Also, how did you find that webpage? I tried to find a page like that. If only there were some search thingy I could go to, insert some search terms and the search thingy will search the internet for relevant webpages. Sadly, those don't exist.

There's a "Getting Debian" link at the top of debian.org, right from there is a link to the Installation Manual. It's also included on-disc under /doc/manual. This stuff isn't that hard to figure out.

Bucket said:

Anyway...
There is a possibility that downloading those incomplete files and installing them via flash drive would work but I'm not a betting man. Best case scenario: the wireless works but Debian is already installed, and without all the useful apps that are usually downloaded from a mirror DURING the install.

The point of them is primarily so you can get online during the installation process.

Graf Zahl said:

It's the Linux-fanboys who aren't in any way constructive here.
Business as usual.

If 'Works for me. If it doesn't for you, you are an idiot' is the only response one can hope to get what do you expect? Be happy in your small corner of utter geek-ness - but if you ever want to hope that the situation changes - behave differently.

I just want to know why passwords to wifi APs are stored in plain text in Debian. I won't ever get a satisfying answer to that. So much for security.

Notice how it's never Linux's fault for any glaring issues like..installing correctly. If Microsoft, IBM, or RedHat acted that way to their customers they wouldn't be in business.

Csonicgo said:

I just want to know why passwords to wifi APs are stored in plain text in Debian. I won't ever get a satisfying answer to that. So much for security.

Actually, there is one (thanks to fraggle for mentioning it long ago).

Another lesson is about security by obscurity. Some fetchmail users asked me to change the software to store passwords encrypted in the rc file, so snoopers wouldn't be able to casually see them.

I didn't do it, because this doesn't actually add protection. Anyone who's acquired permissions to read your rc file will be able to run fetchmail as you anyway—and if it's your password they're after, they'd be able to rip the necessary decoder out of the fetchmail code itself to get it.

All .fetchmailrc password encryption would have done is give a false sense of security to people who don't think very hard. The general rule here is:

17. A security system is only as secure as its secret. Beware of pseudo-secrets.

Even if it was encrypted on disk with some sort of application-specific master key, since (almost) everything on lunix is open-source anyway, the algorithm for retrieving the "encrypted" password from the file (including the "master" key) would be widely known anyway. It would be just as secure as Doom's encryption of cheats in the .exe: guess what, it was not.

The lesson to be learned here is that putting the password itself, even if encrypted (and NOT its equivalent hash value) in an ordinary file is a BAD IDEA, only to be used in a temporary stopgap solution like the (admittedly broken) jump-through-hoops wifi connection method you described, until you switch to a better centralized connection (and password) manager. It would be pointless to complicate things with a (false) sense of security, requiring you to somehow encrypt the password by hand before entering it into the file. You'd be just as safe Base64-encoding it ;-)

Besides, if someone gained enough access privileges to your linux account to view that file (it's in your HOME DIR, right?) you would be pretty much fucked anyway, especially if you have sudo privileges....

Csonicgo said:

I TRIED to love Linux, but when it comes to wifi, it fails. that alone is why I don't use it. Sucks, but when you can't internet, you can't do anything anymore.

I'm not going to lie; WiFi on Linux sucks. I use Ethernet on my desktop, so it doesn't cause grief there, but I replaced the WiFi card in my laptop because things were so bad. The manufacturer of the original card provided the source code for a driver, but the module would crap out after a few minutes of use, requiring me to manually reinsert it. Things were even worse with the Windows driver and NDISwrapper. I put in an Intel card that worked a lot better with the driver in the Debian repository, but I still had to disable wireless N in the module configuration to get it to work on my old university's network.

Should the average be expected to change his or her WiFi card and edit module configurations to get Linux to work? No. You are not the average user, though, so it bothers me that you act like Linux is hopeless.

All the firmware on Debian is in non-free, i've never really had any problems with missing firmware at all.

In my experience, Wifi has always worked. However, on Linux stay away from Atheros.

GhostlyDeath said:

However, on Linux stay away from Atheros.

Why? There are one of the few manufacturers with truly free WiFi drivers: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k, Comparison_of_open_source_wireless_drivers#Linux.