Intel Releases Linux Driver For Centrino WLAN 285
Werner Heuser writes "Finally Intel has made their different announcements about
Linux support for the WLAN part of the Centrino technology
become true. Though not yet officially announced
an Open-Source driver with included firmware
is available at SourceForge.
The driver is still experimental and supposed to work
with 2.4 Kernels as well as with 2.6 ones." (See these previous stories for some background.)
From ipw2100_main.c (Score:4, Interesting)
Open Source Driver + Firmware (Score:5, Interesting)
(Honest question)
Re:NDISWRAPPER (Score:5, Interesting)
if only.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Intel Feeling the Pressure? (Score:2, Interesting)
(I feel as the Agent Smith a little... he he he)
Uh, this is people getting fed up (Score:2, Interesting)
Like the eepro100 driver from before? Or those Texas Instruments wireless chipsets in the DLink 650+? And a whole mess of other drivers for other devices from hardware companies that won't release technical specifications. Heck, are Broadcom 11g drivers out yet?
Bzzt. Wrong. Look who's doing this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Just because they aren't loudly tooting their own horn by splashing "intel" all over the sf.net website doesn't mean they're not helping/having their people do the work. What you saw simply means they haven't been able to work out how to get the HW docs out the door to the community, and are being candid about this in the first sentence of their page.
And shame on you for making bad assumptions about helpful people, and unfairly criticizing an accurate news article.
I suppose I may have been trolled here, and I hate to bite, but this needs to be corrected
Good news, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Centrino is a good chipset, and Centrino-based laptops are fairly popular. Even without the wireless support, I've been happy using a Linux-based Centrino laptop for the last six months. The lack of wireless access was the one thing that had been sticking in my craw.
Now, I'll be able to unequivocally recommend these laptops to friends who use Linux. This will mean more sales for Intel. This, I would think, would be considered a Good Thing (tm). So why the wait?
Wireless extensions (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:NDISWRAPPER (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This couldn't be better timed... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Thanks, Intel... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thanks, Intel... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, nVidia has a good reason - they use proprietary algorithms lisenced from companies who makes them for a living. Their lisence disallows them from releasing the source. Thus, it is not a stupid excuse. Their hands are really tied. Intel also had some completely valid concerns that an Open-Source driver would allow their chip to tune to frequencies out of the legal WLAN band, and at signal strengths way higher than the legal limit, to name a few.
Luckily, Intel (justly IMO) judged that the competitive advantages of Linux support outweighed those risks.
-tsb
*BSD Driver? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Intel Feeling the Pressure? (Score:5, Interesting)
Wintel isn't ALWAYS the badguy.
NOW, I can say THANK GOODNESS no more lockups in Fedora from DriverLoader BS, now my only question is how will they allow Linux users to flash their firmware when the manufacturers don't provide floppy drives on most of the Centrino lines.
Re:This is a great sign (Score:2, Interesting)
This is something i don't understand. In India and many parts of Asia, due to duty structures (computer parts have lesser taxes than fully assembled systems etc) and due to proximity to china, it is cheaper to build your own computer than to buy it pre-built. So I have built all my computers myself - buying RAM from one shop and video cards from another.
My computer had an Intel i810 mobo when they just came out. They had reasonably bad Linux support(video would not work with Linuxes avbl. then) , this was in 99 I think.
But after that I have built myself atleast 3 computers, 1 intel and 2 AMD , and Redhat has worked straight out of the box. This is inspite of me buying the cheapest mobos available, with integrated everything, or going for the absolutely latest on others. On the otherhand, until I put in the manufacturer provided binary drivers, windows support has always been bad - No SVGA, no network etc.
Ofcourse, it might have something to do with the fact that sometimes I can put up with non-spectacular video performance (when I get totally bored reconfiguring XFree86 ), but still Linux supports more machines out of the box than windows from what I have seen- assuming that each different motherboard/cards etc are given equal weightage irrespective of how many of them get sold.
The experience is not different for myy friends either.
Re:Thanks, Intel... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Thanks, Intel... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Intel Feeling the Pressure? (Score:2, Interesting)
the article mentions Firmware but i suspect it is similar to some USB ADSL modems: the firmware is routinely uploaded by the driver during init. I doubt this means the firmware needs to be updated to *support* Linux (do you remember ever flashing any hardware's BIOS to run Linx?), the Windows driver probably does the same thing.
Re:Inspiring (Score:3, Interesting)
Better:
They open-sourced the driver proper, only keeping the firmware closed.
They're providing starter code and a contact guy who can look provide enough help with the proprietary stuff that the community doesn't need to worry about getting hung due to inaccessable info.
Short of opening the firmware this like the best support model yet.