Slow RTL8188FTV in Debian/Ubuntu

Since the RTL8188FTV usb WiFi chipset is natively supported by Ubuntu/Debian, I got few for my Ubunut machinies.  The WiFi dongle is indeed detected and works straight away, however it is very slow.

A quick search on Google shows this may be caused by its aggressive power management.  After applying the below to disable its power management feature, its connection/speed is noticeable better.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/modprobe.d/

echo "options rtl8188fu rtw_power_mgnt=0 rtw_enusbss=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8188fu.conf

Kubuntu and VirtualBox

I have hold back the upgrade from 11.10 to 12.04 as I have learnt my lessons not to upgrade to the latest as soon as it arrives as it is better to wait a while for all the initial teething problems getting fixed.

And 11.10 is working fine for me, well on my netbook anyway.  I know it is running the same Linux under the hood, but Kubuntu seems to handle power management a lot better.  At least my netbook won't put into sleep whenever I pull the power plug.

Anyway, the urge for me to upgrade to 12.04 is VirtualBox.  11.10 is just painfully slow running on VirtualBox.  Hence, I decided to upgrade to the newer version to see if it helps.  Gladly, it seems to work better.  At least I don't need to wait for a minutes for responses.

Update: The latest version of VirtualBox 4.2 seems to fixed the performance issue.  In fact, the new version has improved the speed across the board.

Chrome and Linux

I have tried a free browsers such as Firefox, Opera and now Chrome on my Linux laptop (old R40e P4 Celeron 2.0GHz, 1GB), and must say Chrome is the best browser for resources. I like my Firefox for its wealth of extensions, but it often grinds my little laptop to halt for pages littered with excessive Javascripts and Flash adverts. Flash can be dealt with Flash Blocker, but Javascript is a bit hard. With so call Web 2.0, most "modern" websites are using AJAX (J = Javascripts), and turning off Javascript means useless websites. Unfortunately, this is the landscape of current WWW if is not worsen.

I have not scientifically test Chrome against other browsers, but Chrome does handle these websites where others may fail a lot better. However, it isn't without any problems. Firstly, it seems ever stuck to its BETA label, and its updates are more often than the others. You may argue this is good as updates keeps it current, but it is a pain with slow or metered connections, e.g. mobile network. Secondly, Chrome is still relatively new, web programmers are still targeting their sites to IE and Firefox, Webkit based browsers such as Safari, Chrome and others still taking the second seat if not the third. Thirdly, Chrome's link with Google. I don't know if Chrome's search/title bar is still linking to its parent company. It is a bit annoying to know all things you typed are going to be collected and sent back to the bee hive. Last but not the least, Chrome's convenience features. History search may be a good thing for many, but not for myself. I don't like my descriptions of my previous browsed popped up automatically when I typed a new URL. This can be a disaster if you certain types of websites get displayed while you are doing a presentation in front of a large audience. This is also not so good if you are security cautiousness. Personally, I would like to see Chrome more forgetful like Firefox. For example, I would like it to have an option to forget things when it is closed (history, cookies and temp files)

Nevertheless, if you are running Linux on a slow machine and is looking for a full feature browsers, Chrome is a decent choice.