I've just spent all afternoon experimenting with wifi. I haven't made any real progress but I still wanted to share my findings for anyone else interested in zALARM wifi.
Up until now I've been using Arch's netctl tool to connect to wifi but netctl doesn't let you adjust the rate of the connection and you can't set it within its wifi profile files. I was unable to test networkmanager until I got my USB ethernet as it has about 25 deps and I wasn't willing to install all that manually. I gave nmtui a quick go but no sooner had I started it up to try to configure my connection the wifi driver / kernel started repeatedly printing an error that I didn't make a note of.
I have been able to manually establish a wifi connection without using netctl by following this guide:
http://linuxcommando.blogspot.co.uk/2013/1...fi-network.htmlbut the resultant connection gives me the same errors as netctl does.
I have tried using both iw and iwconfig to configure the rate but neither seem to work for libertas_cs. The iw command to set the rate is something like:
iw wlan0 set bitrates legacy-2.4 12 18 24
but for that I get an error like `operation not supported (-95)` whereas the iwconfig equivent would be something like
iwconfig wlan0 rate 5.5M fixed
but that tells me
SET failed on devic wlan0; Operation not supported
So far I've had no luck changing the rate but I'm sure there are other connection or driver settings I can try adjusting that could help. Turning off WPA isn't really an option - I will be using WPA(2) with all wifi connections I use and I know there's nothing wrong with the router or the connection itself as my laptop and phone connect to it fine.