Panda PAU09 N600 USB WiFi Works Fine With Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Panda PAU09 N600 USB WiFi Works Fine With Linux

If you are in the market for a dual-band USB WiFi adapter, the Panda PAU09 N600 WiFi adapter works well on modern Linux distributions and will cost you just about $20 USD.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=24588

[Chewi]

Good to know something like this exists now. Years ago, I was looking for a dual band PCI Express card and couldn't understand why there were none to be found anywhere. I eventually realised that routers, at least at the time, must have had two adapters.

[M1kkko]

Really, the range of a relatively large external wifi antenna is comparable to the internal wifi cards found in ultrabooks? Is that a good thing?

[stiiixy]

Always good to see hardware achnolwedgement.

M1kko, I believe some laptops actually hook in to metallic parts of the chassis in order to improve their reception. I noticed on my own laptop that the wiring is also quite long. As you note, and whatever tech is used, reception does seem to work quite well in lappies.

[Sonadow]

80211n is now ancient.

80211ad is about to be pushed out and yet we still can't find any 80211ac usb wifi dongles that work OOTB in Linux. What a freaking joke the Linux WiFi driver stack is.

[gsedej]

Does it need nonfree firmware, mening you need wired network to download fw...?

[mastercoms]

80211n is now ancient.

80211ad is about to be pushed out and yet we still can't find any 80211ac usb wifi dongles that work OOTB in Linux. What a freaking joke the Linux WiFi driver stack is.

From the Amazon page:

Works with 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11 ac/b/g/n networks

[starshipeleven]

From the Amazon page:

Works with 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11 ac/b/g/n networks

That's bullshit, this is a wifi N dualband device just like all other chipsets run by rt2800usb driver.

NEVER trust Amazon descriptions. It's already great when they post the correct model name.

They should have written a/b/g/n. The "a" on the beginning is a different and ancient type of wifi.

[starshipeleven]

Good to know something like this exists now. Years ago, I was looking for a dual band PCI Express card and couldn't understand why there were none to be found anywhere. I eventually realised that routers, at least at the time, must have had two adapters.

There are also router-only chipsets or Router SoCs that integrate dualband wifi.

[starshipeleven]

Really, the range of a relatively large external wifi antenna is comparable to the internal wifi cards found in ultrabooks? Is that a good thing?

That's because it is a type of antenna that isn't terribly effective and is also omnidirectional (again worst case), vs the fact that most laptops solder the wifi antennas to the screen's metal frame or to the EMI shield behind it (large as the screen) so it's normal that it is less crappy than it on average.

If you replace that crap with any half-decent biquad or mini-yagi or whatever it will pwn the laptop any day with an antenna that is big as your fist, with a shoestring budget and a slightly bigger antenna you can get up to a few of km of range on such adapters. See here for some examples. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=double+biq...ax=1&ia=images
Buying a commercial antenna with similar performance is rather expensive, but they come in nice rain-proof casings as they are pro stuff.