I have used Ubuntu for almost a decade now. I have always thought it had a pretty good chance of being the alternative to MS Windows. After the recent Windows 8 release, which definitely makes a Linux alternative all the more imperative, I find it strangely ironic that Ubuntu seems to be emulating just that. Sigh.

Rant over and now for a prductivity tip. When Ubuntu loses Wi-Fi connectivity, restarting network-manager or networking will not help. Reboot seems to be the only remedy after that. Here are a couple of bugs reported on this issue.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1072518 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/dbus/+bug/1102507

There are many workarounds you can find on the net. However, on my laptop, what seems to work always is the following.

sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe wl

Of course, the real solution may be to start using Arch Linux or something much simpler than the Windows-wannabe Ubuntu :)