alt Hacker NewsI'm using Linux on the desktop for 15 years and I still sometimes cannot connect to Wifi.
This is because the list of network refreshes (and disappears) before I can find and click the correct Wifi:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/network-manager-applet/-/issu...
This completely breaks the Linux experience for anybody living in a reasonably populous area. The issue has 3 upvotes.
I also put a 400 $ bounty on it, if anybody wants to give it a shot. (Given that AI is supposed to replace 90% of programmers last year, making the Wifi list stay visible should be easy, right?)
This worked fine 10 years ago.
Most of my gripes are around some UI garbage behaviour like that. I have a file manager on one PC (I think it's the Ubuntu one where some "GUI in Snap" stuff breaks the GUI) breaks the file picker dialogue, so that when pasting a directory path in to navigate there, at the exact instant you press Enter, it autocompletes the first file so that that gets selected, leading you to upload a file you didn't want to upload.
That said, all of that feels like really high quality compared to when once per year I click the Wifi menu on some Windows and it take 20 seconds to appear at all.
Replies
I've been recommending Mint/Cinnamon over Ubuntu for years now. Its wifi widget does not do this, nor does it use snap.
It takes skill to make a GUI that integrates dynamic information a good UX. For things like WiFi I discovered that modifying config files is an infinitely better experience than any GUI on Linux.
Also for some reason DE's sometimes fail to automatically connect to an AP when it's right there and I have to click for them to do it. This issue literally never happened to me when just using wpa_supplicant, for years whenever an AP is operational then so is the connection without fail.
congratz to receiving the fix
Last time I tried Linux I was so done with Windows I installed Arch. Couldn't connect to Wifi. I figured it was Arch, so I installed Ubuntu. Literally the same problem. So I got a new USB wifi adaptor that said it supported Linux...same problem. I gave up and have been using a MacBook ever since lol.
Have you tried KDE Plasma? I have loved it since coming from GNOME. Install it atop Debian 13 and everything just works.
That sounds like a GNOME problem, not a Linux problem.
You should give KDE a go.
Also the latest KDE UI that inserts a tiny password input box below the SSID when you click the SSID, and doesn't scroll it into view, so you're left wondering what's going on
Really really bad WiFi connection UI all over
If you are sensitive to these issues, unfortunately you need to go with a mainstream linux distribution and use near-default settings.
It's great that you can customize everything and use your own window manager, compositor, etc ... but these issues are the price you pay. It is unfair to compare this to Windows, where you don't even have these customization options.
Specifically for the network manager applet, it is not fixed because it's not really used anymore. GNOME Shell has it's own network selection menu that does not use the applet. It is the default on most systems, so users don't face this issue by default.