I have an Acer Aspire 5536G. It’s a good laptop, but the wireless support under Ubuntu 9.10 is poor. The wireless always has a weak signal (even sitting within half a metre of the router) and there are frequent drop-outs.
The problem is with the ath9k driver.
The fix is in a more recent version of the ath9k driver. To install it, simply install the linux-backports-modules-karmic and linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic packages:
david@continuity:~$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-karmic linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic
Next: reboot.
Simple as that.
ps. Technically, you should be able to unload the old module and load the new module, but my laptop didn’t seem to play well with that… or, at least, the Network Manager in Ubuntu didn’t like it. When in doubt, take the Windows approach: reboot.
Great timing! Just got Karmic installed on my 5536 yesterday and ran into this issue. Thanks!
It had been bugging me for a few weeks. I started transferring more data and it got bad enough that I had to hunt around for a fix. I’m glad it helped.
Here’s the bug in the Ubuntu bugzilla by the way:
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-backports-modules-2.6.31/+bug/414560?comments=all
It seems that the issue isn’t 100% solved with backports (which is what I’m seeing), but the next version of the kernel, to be included with 10.04 Lucid Lynx, behaves much better.