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I am surprised by the amount of wifi-network-related questions without an accepted answer. If you look below, combined they amount for almost as much as 14.04 tags alone!

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Is people less willing to help on those questions?

Are solutions specific to each particular case?

Is that hardware the most prone to bugs in Debian/Ubuntu?

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    They are really common and user specific in most cases? Also this site does not have the man power to answer every question (2/3 I think get answered). There are simply too many questions to answer. Remember too, an unanswered question is a question that does not have an accepted or upvoted (2 votes?), they may of been answered in comments, were user error and never got flagged, have a 0 or - score answer, the statistics are a bit skewed. Also you lumped networking in with wifi and while, yes they can be related, they are not the same thing.
    – Mark Kirby
    Commented Aug 20, 2016 at 9:51
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    It's very specific to hardware. Even with the same card, there can still be differences causes by different kernel, BIOS, etc On one laptop that I have with a broadcom card, wifi refused to work in Ubuntu 16.04 but did in Lubuntu 14.04, then refused again in Arch Linux. On my main Ubuntu machine, (broadcom again) wifi absolutely will not work unless the kernel is 4* and the nvram file is copied and renamed in the right place. It used to be essential to compile and patch the kernel too, thankfully no longer. I spent days fixing that stuff! I can only answer network Qs about those two devices.
    – Zanna Mod
    Commented Aug 20, 2016 at 10:14

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1. Lack of users answering those questions

There are very few users who regularly answer network-related questions. Off the top of my head, I can only name 3 maybe 4 users who answer them more or less regularly.

2. Lack of hardware availability

The hardware issues often require testing and having the said hardware available. Personally, I have access to only 3 wifi cards, and swapping them on and off requires time. Not a lot of users are willing to go down that route. Terminal and bash are readily available - hence more users pursuing command-line type of questions or user administration.

3. Path of least resistance

Lots of people answer the questions to which they know answers or feel confident in answering. WiFi questions require time to troubleshoot and the solutions are not always apparent unless you are chili555 who is a guru and I'm not worthy to speak his name.

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  • This answer is exactly what I was going to explain.
    – Luis Alvarado Mod
    Commented Aug 21, 2016 at 3:18
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    If answers closed as dupes are counted (idk if they are), then those might make up a pretty big percentage, as there's at least one BCM43** question a day. Also, maybe they only get 4 CVs.
    – TheWanderer
    Commented Aug 21, 2016 at 4:59

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