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I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 which has a lot of wifi issues.

What version of Ubuntu has fewer WIFI problems?

Zanna
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Zeno Raiser
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    What are the "wifi issues"? – Pilot6 Jul 26 '17 at 06:39
  • @Pilot6 This "curious"issues: https://askubuntu.com/questions/939758/classic-ubuntu-16-04-lts-wifi-issue –  Jul 26 '17 at 06:56
  • For WiFi Packet capture (what network professionals do) Linux is actually better suited than other OSs, with the right drivers and the right hardware. Then the Wireshark software can give you even better (=more complete) packet-inspection. It's the NIC card that matters. It's bad that hardware vendors often don't give information whether Linux is supported, personally I was sad sometimes that haven't found this info on the packaging of "Wifi-USB-Sticks". – knb Jul 26 '17 at 09:45

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Your question reflects a (very common) misconception in my opinion. There's no version of Ubuntu that in general has fewer wifi problems.

When someone installs Ubuntu (or any Linux distribution) on a device that was previously running a different OS, they may find that some features of the hardware, such as the wifi, do not work well. The person then is likely to conclude that, since that feature worked well under another OS, the problem is Ubuntu in general, and the hardware has nothing to do with it.

In fact, the hardware has everything to do with it, in that wireless issues in Ubuntu most often relate to the drivers available for the wireless card. Since some manufacturers of these cards, such as Broadcom, have historically provided little or no support to Linux systems, community efforts have been required to get their devices working. In some cases, Linux folks have had to reverse-engineer drivers (which is very hard work). See Rinzwind's answer here to a related question.

Since it takes time to diagnose issues, make tweaks, and patch kernels, support tends to improve over time. This means that if your hardware is new, it may lack support, or you might have to apply a hacky workaround until full support appears. In any case, solutions are specific to hardware, which is why we always request hardware information from users who ask about wireless problems.

For new hardware, the latest version of Ubuntu* is generally more likely to have support. Using the hardware enablement stack may also be helpful for these devices.

*That said, the iso image for Ubuntu 17.04 has some wireless bugs, which have been fixed and should generally go away after a full system upgrade (sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade)

Zanna
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