WiFi and Elementary OS

Since installing Elementary OS on my 2013 MacBook Pro, I had been using a wired connection and only recently noticed that the operating system was not recognising the wireless card in my laptop. I tried a few suggested solutions online but nothing worked. However, I found an old USB WiFi dongle that simply worked.

I was curious to find out more about this venerable dongle so I asked Gemini:

What can you tell me about the year of manufacture and other details of the TP-LINK USB dongle with identification TL-WN322G+?

Identifying the exact year of manufacture for a specific TP-LINK TL-WN322G+ USB dongle might be challenging due to the lack of individual tracking on each unit. However, I can provide you with some general information about this model and suggest methods to determine its approximate age:

General Information:

• The TP-LINK TL-WN322G+ is a wireless USB adapter that supports 802.11g Wi-Fi connectivity with speeds up to 54 Mbps. 

• It was first introduced in 2008, making it a relatively older model compared to newer Wi-Fi standards like 802.11ac and 802.11ax. 

• It's a budget-friendly option for basic internet connectivity needs and is not ideal for demanding tasks requiring high bandwidth.

Given that our Internet router is pretty ancient that's hardly a problem. I asked the following question:

What WiFi standard came before 802.11ac and 802.11ax?

The WiFi standard that came before 802.11ac is 802.11n, also known as Wi-Fi 4. It was introduced in 2009 and offered significant improvements over its predecessor, 802.11g, in terms of:

• Speed: Increased maximum data transfer rates of up to 300 Mbps compared to 54 Mbps for 802.11g. 

• Range: Improved signal range and stability. 

• Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology: Introduced MIMO technology, which utilizes multiple antennas to transmit and receive data simultaneously, further enhancing speed and reliability. 

• 802.11ac, also known as Wi-Fi 5, came after 802.11n in 2013 and offered even faster speeds (up to 1.3 Gbps), wider channels, and improved beamforming technology for more efficient data transmission. Finally, 802.11ax, or Wi-Fi 6, arrived in 2019, bringing further advancements in speed, efficiency, and capacity to handle the ever-growing demands of modern wireless networks. 

So here I am with my 2013 MacBook Pro and my 2008 WiFi dongle connected to rather dated wireless router. I thought I'd find out more about this router:

What can you tell me about the HUAWEI EchoLife HG8245A wireless router?

The Huawei EchoLife HG8245A is an optical network terminal (ONT), also known as a fiber optic modem router,  designed for home and small office/home office (SOHO) users. It utilizes GPON technology to provide high-speed internet access through fiber optic cables.

Here are some key features of the Huawei EchoLife HG8245A:

• Supports GPON technology: Delivers fast and reliable internet connectivity through fiber optic cables. 

• Wi-Fi connectivity: Provides wireless networking capabilities with support for 802.11b/g/n standards, offering speeds of up to 300 Mbps. 

• Wired connectivity: Includes four Gigabit Ethernet LAN ports for connecting wired devices like computers, game consoles, and smart TVs. 

• Additional features: It also has one Phone (POTS) port for connecting a landline phone, and one USB 2.0 port for potential future uses.

Here's a table summarizing the specifications of Huawei EchoLife HG8245A:

Feature Specification

• Technology GPON 

• Wi-Fi Standard 802.11b/g/n 

• Wi-Fi Speed Up to 300 Mbps 

• Ethernet Ports 4 x Gigabit LAN 

• Phone (POTS) Ports 1 

• USB Ports 1 x USB 2.0

Overall, the Huawei EchoLife HG8245A is a suitable option for users who require a reliable and basic fiber optic internet connection for home or small office use. However, it's important to note that the Wi-Fi standard it supports (802.11n) is an older standard with limited speeds compared to newer options like Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax).

If you prioritize high-speed Wi-Fi for activities like online gaming, streaming high-definition videos, or transferring large files, you might want to consider a router that supports newer Wi-Fi standards.

I tried to find out the year of manufacture of this modem:

What year was this wireless router from HUAWEI released?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a definitive answer about the exact year the Huawei EchoLife HG8245A was first released.

While I looked through various resources including product pages, press releases, and technology news archives, the specific launch date wasn't readily available.

However, based on the information gathered:

The router supports the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard, which was introduced in 2009. This suggests the HG8245A was likely released after 2009, but an exact year is difficult to pinpoint.

It's also helpful to consider the release dates of similar models from Huawei. For instance, the Huawei EchoLife HG8120, a predecessor model, was released in 2008. This might suggest the HG8245A came out sometime after 2008.

Therefore, while I cannot confirm the exact year, it's safe to assume the Huawei EchoLife HG8245A was released sometime after 2009, likely in the early 2010s.

My Ailing Laptop

Lately, my late 2013 MacBook Pro is refusing to stay connected to the household WiFi which is a source of irritation. It had been flaky for a while and one might suspect the laptop's WiFI but it connects just fine to the WiFi from my iPhone when I use the latter as a hotspot. I'm currently running a ten metre cable from the household router to it so all is well. I don't move about much with it anyway so it's not really an issue.

It's back to the old pre-WiFi days
for me as my laptop lapses into senility

Ever since I installed Linux Mint on my laptop to replace the Mac OS, the Bluetooth has not worked but that didn't bother me. I replaced the ten year old battery with a new one when I was in Australia earlier this year and that has really given the old laptop a new lease on life. There's no doubt however, that the device, like its owner, is showing its age. Last night, I discovered that closing the lid placed the laptop in permanent suspension from which it would not awake. Once the lid closed, I needed to restart it. However, by changing preferences so that closing the lid had no effect, I was able to remedy that little glitch.

I've lately found my misplaced USB cooling pad and so I now rest the laptop on that to keep it cool as it can often overheat if placed under even minimal stress. Overall, despite its current quirks, the machine is quite sufficient for my needs and I've grown quite attached to it after using it regularly for over nine years now. It may even see me out. Who knows? In the meantime I still have my Raspberry Pi 400 keyboard computer as a back up in case my primary device has a heart attack. 

My backup device
Raspberry Pi 400

There is a Raspberry 5 out now but no sign of a Raspberry Pi 500 as yet. Regardless, such a device would be superfluous to my needs at the moment. As the year draws to a close, I must note that my output this year of 26 posts falls far short of my output for 2022 when I made 47 posts. However, it's consistent with my output in other years since my output for earlier years was:

►  2021 (27)

►  2020 (22)

►  2019 (17)

►  2018 (16)

►  2017 (24)

►  2016 (16)

The average number of posts for the years 2016 to 2023 is a little over 24 posts or almost exactly two per month.

WiFi Connectivity Problems with LinuxMint

I found that if I use my laptop in the bedroom where the signal strength is about 50% then the WiFi constantly prompts me for the password which should be automatically stored. Once supplied, I'm often prompted again and again and again. Sometimes it's satisfied but only for a while, then the prompts begins again.

The problem doesn't occur as much where the signal strength is stronger. I turned to Linux Forums and discovered the following suggested fix:

sudo sed -i 's/3/2/' /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/*

echo "options rtl8723be ips=N" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf

After entering this into the terminal and rebooting, all seems well. No more prompts. Fingers crossed that the problem doesn't recur. Oops, just as I typed this the problem did recur. Well, sort off. The connection dropped briefly and then restored itself without prompting me for a password. I can handle those sorts of transient disruptions if they're not too frequent. 

What I'll do is to get on with my normal workflow and I'll report back on what's transpired in an hour or so. It's now 10:51pm ... so it 12:14am and the WiFi did drop out a couple of times but it soon reconnected and I was never once prompted for my password. While things are not ideal, I must say that overall I can live with the current minor disruptions.

Laptop Connectivity Problems

A problem that I encounter almost daily on my 2013 MacBook Pro is a connectivity issue. Whether I'm connected wirelessly or wired via an Ethernet cable from a repeater, I lose the connection and am repeatedly prompted for the password to the WiFi network if I'm connected wirelessly. After a short while the problem goes away and all is well. The problem is annoying but doesn't seriously trouble me.

Nonetheless, I'd like to get to the bottom of it and there are plenty of requests on Internet forums from Linux Mint users for solutions to exactly this problem. The fact that it doesn't make any difference whether I'm connected via WiFi or cable rules out the WiFi hardware driver as the problem. Neither does it matter whether I'm connected to the WiFi repeater or the WiFi router.

The Internet router that I'm using is an ancient one and only operates on the 2.4 Ghz frequency with no support for 5 Ghz or any other frequencies! I don't use Bluetooth on this laptop so I've just now turned it off and I'll see if that makes any difference. It shouldn't but who knows. It's worth a try. Overall, I should be happy that things are working as well as they are given the antiquity of the technology that I'm using.

The operating system that I'm using is Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon with the Cinnamon version being 5.2.7. This means that the system is up-to-date. My WiFi adapter is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1

I'd like to say that things worked flawlessly when I had Mac OS X installed on this laptop but that wasn't the case. Right from the beginning I had IP conflict alerts whenever connected to a repeater. I first encountered the issue when I stayed at a hotel in Singapore that was clearly using a repeater. In my own bedroom, where the WiFi signal was weak, I encountered the same problem when I installed a repeater. I solved the problem by connecting an Ethernet cable from the repeater to my laptop.

Raspberry Pi WiFi Problems

Knowing that I’d be travelling to Bali, I naturally brought my laptop with me but decided to also include my Raspberry Pi 400 so that I could test it out using the villa’s television set as a monitor. The set up for WiFi is that you first connect to a local IP address and, once connected, you then log in using the supplied user name and password. This is the same as what happens at Starbucks and McDonalds back in Jakarta.

There was no problem connecting with the laptop via the full fledged Chrome browser that is running under Mint Linux but the Raspberry Pi, running the default operating system, struggled mightily. The problem seems to be with the browsers. I tried both Chromium and Firefox ESR (which is not the full-fledged version of the browser) and each had problems with security. What should happen is that a login screen pops up and you can enter the user name and password. This did happen initially but then the connection dropped and I wasn’t able to get that login screen to come up again.

Setting up my iPhone as a hotspot, I was able to connect the Internet without any problems because all that’s required is the password, there is no intermediate step as with the villa’s WiFi. I’ve tinkered around and there’s no obvious solution: Firefox ESR and Chromium just aren’t keen on connecting to what they see as an insecure Internet connection. I don’t travel much these days and so this is not a deal breaker for me. When I return home to Jakarta, my Raspberry Pi will be working fine again but, for someone who spends a good deal of time on the road and wants to make use of hotel WiFi, this would be a major problem.

Installation of Linux Mint 20.3

You can't say that there's no technological excitement in my life. I finally had to abandon the use of Ubuntu on my 2013 MacBook Pro. The keyboard, trackpad and mouse freezes were becoming too frequent and numerous reboots were required to activate these devices. Finally no amount of rebooting could activate them and so I turned to Linux Mint.

The installation went smoothly enough but the boot up process was, and continues to be, interrupted by a series of error messages. That is a minor irritation but far worse was to come. I discovered that the OS didn't recognise the WiFi adapter in the laptop. So, for the moment, no WiFi but thankfully I have an Ethernet connection. I had an old TP-LINK WiFi dongle that must be at least a decade old and I tried that out but no luck. Perhaps a can buy a more up-to-date dongle that works. This is a matter for deeper investigation but for the moment, as long as the keyboard, mouse and trackpad don't freeze up on me, I'll be happy.

 

 

My initial attempt to install the Chrome browser failed but then I was reminded that flatpak is built into Linux Mint and, by using that, the installation of the Chrome browser and also Calibre was straight forward. So far, after a couple of days of using Linux Mint, I've had no problems and I hope things stay that way.

I've put out a request for help on the Linux Mint Forums and hopefully help will be forthcoming. So far 20 views but no comments. However, it's been up less than an hour. 

I'll add an addendum if help arrives.

ADDENDUM

... and help did arrive! A user called sleeper12 offered two suggestions. The first was:

inxi -Fxxxrz && rfkill list && iwconfig && mokutil --sb-state 

This had no effect but the second suggestion did the trick:

sudo modprobe -r wl && sudo modprobe wl && sudo systemctl restart network-manager.service 

This is great news and my laptop is now fully functional, apart from the webcam that I assume is still not working. I should ask for help with that on the forums as well.

Chrome OS Flex Update

Having installed Chrome OS Flex on my 2103 Mac Book and replacing the Mac operating system, I've been using it successively to carry out my everyday tasks. On the plus side, the WiFi glitch that so bedeviled my Mac with the old operating system has gone. The problem arose when I tried to access the WiFi from a repeater. I would get an IP conflict error message. Not anymore.

On the negative side, the touch pad remains problematic. The pointer works but sometimes is not responsive for a few seconds and this makes it impossible to use for sustained periods of time. Fortunately the mouse works just fine. However, when connected to an external monitor, the mouse becomes "twitchy" and suddenly jumps from the laptop screen to the external monitor. This becomes quite an irritation when using dual screens for extended periods of time.

I've tried to download Linux but so far I've not been successful. Figure 1 shows what happens.

Figure 1

Setting up a recovery image on my USB drive also fails as can be seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2

I don't print anything so I've no idea what problems there are with printing. I would suppose many but fortunately that's not an issue for me. I've learned about PWAs or Progressive Web Apps, defined by Wikipedia as:

A progressive web application (PWA), commonly known as a progressive web app, is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and WebAssembly. It is intended to work on any platform that uses a standards-compliant browser, including both desktop and mobile devices.

I've set one up for Twitter so that I'm saved from needing to open it via the browser. Here is some additional information from Wikipedia:

In 2017, Twitter released Twitter Lite, a PWA alternative to the official native Android and iOS apps. According to Twitter, Twitter Lite consumed only 1-3% of the size of the native apps. In July 2019 Twitter started serving all website users to Twitter Lite by default. On June 1, 2020, Twitter deactivated the legacy website layout, leaving the progressive web app version as the only option.

Starbucks provides a PWA that is 99.84% smaller than its equivalent iOS app. After deploying its PWA, Starbucks doubled the number of online orders, with desktop users ordering at about the same rate as mobile app users.

Several businesses highlight significant improvements in a wide variety of key performance indicators after PWA implementation, like increased time spent on page, conversions, or revenue.

As I take many screenshots, I was relieved to discover the following keyboard shortcuts:

• Take a screenshot: Press Ctrl + Show windows 
• Take a partial screenshot: Press Shift + Ctrl + Show windows , then click and drag.

Another issue is that my poor quality webcam does not work which is unfortunate but it's something that I never use so it's no great loss to me. Obviously, it could be a deal breaker for some who need to use the device on a regular basis. 

Additionally, my Express VPN does not support Chrome OS which seems odd but I'll investigate the matter further and will consult with the company's technical support if I can't resolve the issue.

Overall I'm happy with my new operating system that is still in unstable beta release. I'll look forward to some of my existing problems disappearing during future updates to the operating system.

WiFi Problems with MacBook Pro

My somewhat dated MacBook Pro is still serving me faithfully but I've had problems with getting it to connect with WiFi repeaters. 

I have a TP-LINK TL-WA855RE N300 Wi-Fi Wall Plug Range Extender/Repeater/Access Point and was having no end of trouble getting my MacBook Pro to maintain a WiFi connection to it. It would connect but soon an IP conflict message would appear and the connection would be broken. Having become so reliant on WiFi, I'd forgotten that this repeater has an Ethernet port. 

When I remembered, I then used a wired connection. My MacBook was assigned an IP address and that was the end of my problems. I need the repeater in my study, which is a little out of range of the TP-Link router, and so the lack of mobility is not a problem. I can simply turn the WiFi back on when I'm elsewhere in the house. 

The problem only occurred with the MacBook. My Samsung smartphone experienced no such problems. So the WiFi connectivity problem was never resolved but an alternative connectivity solution came to the rescue. Whether this same problem occurs with the latest MacBooks I don't know. 

Of course I don't have a dedicated Ethernet port on my MacBook Pro and so I needed to use a dongle, which fortunately I already had in my possession. With that and an Ethernet cable, I've had no further problems. It's just a reminder that, even in the world of technology, everything old can be new again. Once upon a time, there was no WiFi and Internet connectivity, when there was an Internet to connect to, was achieved via cables. Now, in my study, I'm living in the past.

Resolving WiFi Problems in MacOs

This is complete rewrite of an earlier post in which my purported solution to my Wi-Fi woes turned out to be ineffective. The specific problem concerned only certain networks, specifically the Wi-Fi in my Singapore hotel room and the Wi-Fi at Changi airport. The former required a password and my smartphone connected without a problem but my laptop seemingly connected without needing to supply a password. However, while connected to the Wi-Fi, my laptop would not connect to the Internet. At Changi, I likewise connected to the network but couldn't reach required site to insert my 5 digit password.

A suggestion provided on Tom's Hardware site at least solved the problem at Changi. Open System Preferences under the Apple logo and choose Network:

The suggestion was to click on minus sign in the diagram above while Wi-Fi is selected. Once the Wi-Fi option is deleted, restart the laptop and go back to above screen and click on the positive sign. Choose Wi-Fi from the drop-down menu and then try connecting again. It worked for me. This is something that I'd never tried before but I've now added it to my troubleshooting armoury.