WPA wireless "just works" in Ubuntu 7.04

Introduction

This past week I installed a pre-release of the next version of Ubuntu. This alpha version is called "Herd 4" and should NOT be installed on a production machine. Please wait until the final release of Ubuntu 7.04 which should be in April, 2007.

With that disclaimer behind us, let me tell you that this next release is going to rock! In addition to many other improvements such as automatically installing multimedia codecs, Ubuntu 7.04 will now allow you to painlessly connect to secure wireless networks.

I have been waiting a long-time for Linux to automatically connect to WPA-secured wireless networks. WPA is the minimum security for a modern wireless network to be considered "secure". (Even WPA can still be hacked if you use a small pre-shared key.) In past versions of Ubuntu, you had to manually install software (xsupplicant) and configure it if you wanted to connect to a WPA network.

Now you can connect in two simple steps. First, click on the wireless icon in the top-right of the screen and select the wireless network you want to connect to.

Then, depending on the type of security for the wireless network, you will be prompted to authenticate to the network. At my workplace, the prompt looks like this. The only fields I had to modify are "Identity" (my username) and "Password". Within a few seconds, I was connected!


How can it be improved?

I have one complaint about the wireless network authentication process. The network manager software is smart enough to remember all of your network credentials, but it requires you to create a master password to secure these passwords. So every time you reboot or come back from hibernation, you have to log into Ubuntu AND log into the network keyring. In my opinion, this is redundant and the network keyring should see that you have already authenticated yourself.

If you want to fix this manually, it is possible to do so by following a few simple instructions given by Johnny Chadda.


How does this compare to other operating systems?

Windows XP is normally thought to have great support for wireless networks. This is true for some networks, but many secure wireless networks require the user to perform multiple complex steps to configure the correct security and authentication settings. To see what I mean, just look at these instructions to connect to various University wireless networks.

On the other hand, the Mac OS X interface looks very similar to Ubuntu 7.04. Just like Ubuntu, it will allow you to painlessly connect to secure wireless networks.