The Battle for Wireless Network Drivers 163
An anonymous reader points out this Jem Matzan article "about the pain Linux and BSD programmers have in trying to obtain/write device drivers for various wireless cards," writing: This article also has a fairly detailed explanation of how wireless firmwares and drivers work. Two of the manufacturers are actively working with the FOSS community without requiring an NDA."
The companies (Score:5, Informative)
Of all the things (Score:2, Informative)
Site slow, mirror (Score:3, Informative)
http://mirrordot.org/stories/4e218f7eded126769c2c
Re:Of all the things (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Of all the things (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The view from the other side of the fence (Score:4, Informative)
From what I gather it sounds like you didn't give it at all enough of a chance to work. A few days? That's nothing. There are logistical problems with open sourcing your software, just as there might be with any transition. It takes a little bit of work and time to actually make sure the cooperation with the open source community is fruitful.
You shouldn't have fired someone for merely suggesting something to you. Didn't you make that decision?
Of course, if he was in charge of the transition and let it fail that's another story. If this is the case, then don't blame open source for your employee's failures.
The good list (Score:5, Informative)
Ralink Technology [ralinktech.com]
Atmel Corporation [atmel.com]
Realtek [realtek.com.tw] Linux drivers here [sourceforge.net]
Vote with your money, folks. If you would like to see companies cooperate with the free software community, reward the companies that do so by buying their products.
If you know of a particular piece of WiFi hardware that works particularly well in Linux or BSD, please follow up here so we all know what to buy. (See also this list [seattlewireless.net].)
steveha
Waiting for Linksys.... (Score:2, Informative)
In the meantime I tried to use the open-source Linux driver [berlios.de] from Berlios but it's not quite there yet, at least for the BCM4318. Can't complain, tho, wouldn't want to be in their shoes considering that Broadcom is totally uncooperative, from what I've heard.
Re:As someone that has been there (Score:2, Informative)
There is a small but growing movement in Intel to better support the OSS community, at least so far as making the binary object code redistributable, even if not modifiable. I know there are several in the OSS community that will say binary blobs are bad, but a start is a start. I was pushing really hard before I transferred out of the networking dept. a couple years ago.
Re:What about Intel? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:What about Intel? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The companies (Score:3, Informative)
Apparently Realtek deserves an honorary mention, since TFA says "Realtek has reportedly been responsive to requests for hardware documentation without requiring a non-disclosure agreement (NDA)" - the only difference from the wording for Ralink and Amtel is the addition of 'reportedly'. Oddly TFA doesn't explain the difference, but perhaps they just had less information about Realtek's relationships with OSS developers. Anyhow from the interview with the Realtek spokesperson they seem as OSS-friendly as the other two.
Re:The good list (Score:3, Informative)
Problem is, I don't get to decide what wireless chipsets get integrated in products. I sort of have a choice when it comes to USB adapters, but whole laptops?
Re:As someone that has been there (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.leenooks.com/ [leenooks.com]
It's going pretty well and seems to have become popular enough in its niche that it's not just me maintaining it, and it (almost) pays for the hosting, with adsense.
Re:As someone that has been there (Score:3, Informative)
LOL. You'll get the same response from Seagate when asking a question about the output of smartmon tools. Actually, that's wrong. They'll tell you to shut down the system and run a DOS pass-fail utility if you have concerns about drive health. Then they'll tell you the information you're looking at, or asking about, is proprietary, and they can't discuss it.
If it wasn't for the 5-year warranty, I'd be looking elsewhere.
Re:As someone that has been there (Score:3, Informative)
Been there (on the Corp. side) (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, the real 'motivation' for not supporting this kind of stuff is usually corporate inertia and bureaucracy. 99% of the time there is no IP really to protect. However, 'the system' slaps an NDA on everything by default and although field application engineers and tech. marketing are be assigned to the visible customers theres no-one officially tasked with supporting sales-via-FOSS. Result: even if there's goodwill (which is surprisingly often) nothing happens.
It is absolutely normal for the Intel's of this world to simultaenously pay people to evangelise and support FOSS whilst at the same time product-divisions stone-wall. There are simply other (internal) agendas at work than getting the product out. In short-hand: not related to this years' job objectives? No action! No bonus or visibility? Spare-time effort only.
I think it is noticeable that the businesses that responded effectively in the case of the Wireless drivers were the smaller, hungrier, more genuinely market/customer driven operations.
Fortunately, in the longer-term the Marvell's of this world do tend to rip the lazy corps. a new one even in more conventional customer relationships. The underlying culture of an organisation (genuinely customer driven or just talk) *will* show through. Alas it's a slow process...
Andrew
Re:The good list (Score:3, Informative)
Problem is, I don't get to decide what wireless chipsets get integrated in products. I sort of have a choice when it comes to USB adapters, but whole laptops?
Precisely. Even with the PCMCIA adapters I bought recently, there is no possible way to tell the chipset from the packaging. You can't even look up the product number -- they use the same darn number like WG-511 and the same packaging but change the chipset inside. As luck would have it, one had a Ralink and works with linux; the other had Marvell and I'm forced to use ndiswrapper.
Friendly Vendors (Score:3, Informative)
Re:What about Intel? (Score:3, Informative)
Two reasons basically - Intel (and coincidentally Broadcom and Marvell) do make the more functional and high performing network chips in the industry, and they are really not that stoked about releasing driver and firmware source code which exposes the inner workings of these chipsets and IP cores.
It must be said that there is no choice on running an Intel graphics adapter if that is what is built into your device and there is no further expansion. A laptop for instance. This makes it "important" to Intel to eventually make their products more friendly in the open source world. However on a PC which has an integrated ethernet like Marvell Yukon or so, there is plenty of choice; plug in an ethernet expansion card or wireless adapter that DOES work, and you can still do what you wanted to do, even if you spent $4.50 extra on the motherboard for the privilege of said chipset in the first place.
Intel are (as in the article) working on such stuff, but Marvell and Broadcom do seem to outsource their driver writing sometimes and there are some legal hurdles on the original code, such that they cannot release anything. Intel have spent a couple of YEARS working on their open sourcing efforts. Companies like IBM release their firmware and so on after incredible, incredible delays (SLOF for the JS20 is a good example.. they released the Forth part and then 6 months later an open binary for the JS20 boot portion so you could change the IMPORTANT parts of it) so that the code they release is about as far from relevant as it can be, although this is mostly a function of doing it right, sometimes it is also a function of doing it in a way that does not kick sand in the face of another, in-house proprietary offering (for instance, if they did not want a free Linux to run on hardware they intended to sell a proprietary UNIX on as the prefered OS)
The other reason is especially for regulations on wireless frequencies. If Intel let anyone program their controller to operate on channel 13, THEY are responsible for the operation and illegal use of those frequencies in countries where they are not public access. While the guy running his laptop and WLAN on channel 13 will get the fine from the FCC in the US for example, the FCC or CE regulatory bodies may then turn around and refuse to certify their future hardware that so easily breaks their specification (part of the certification process is an assurance that it does not interfere with bands that are regulated). That would be bad as you simply can't sell equipment that generates RF without FCC or CE approval.
Re:Suggested Solution (Score:3, Informative)
Wireless cards + Linux == Nightmare (Score:2, Informative)
I, just yesterday, ordered a belkin wireless G nic specifically because it had a atheros chipset that is supported by madwifi for my MythTv setup at home. I am creating a dedicated htpc frontend because I'm impatient, I whipped out an old Linksys WUSB11 v2.8 USB nic that I had, and again revisited the berlios atmel project page, fully expecting it (like last time) to take a few days before I could even get the drivers to compile. I'm not sure whether it's because I've done it before, or whether the project has proceeded that much further, but I got it working in less than an hour, got bored and created some fc6 rpms for it. They're available here:
http://www.giotechnology.com/fc6 [giotechnology.com]
There's probably something wrong with them: ie the versioning scheme isn't FC standard, I could have included a hotplug config file, so you don't have to roll your own, etc etc. I'm willing to listen to feedback.
If someone would like to host them, let me know, they're currently on a dinky cable connection.
FYI myth users, wireless B will not cut it for watching video, Wireless G works, but I get the feeling that it is strained, so if your following my footsteps, you may want to look into one of the faster G protocols.
I'm waiting for the upstream G protocols to actually standardize before I go any higher in the Wireless spectrum. I dislike vendor lock in.
Re:The good list - chipsets and devices (Score:2, Informative)
In order to be able to vote with one's wallet (or credit card), one needs to get to know who are the good guys among device manufacturers as well (namely which chips are inside the various wireless devices).
Here are some links to support these decisions:
Devices using Ralink chipsets
http://ralink.rapla.net/ [rapla.net]
Devices using Realtek chipsets
http://realtek.rapla.net/ [rapla.net]
Devices using ZyDAS chipsets (mostly external "stick type" USB devices)
http://zydas.rapla.net/ [rapla.net]
Beware of those manufacturers who routinely change chipsets without changing a device's name or model number!
Btw.: It might be worth noting that ZyDAS has been acquired by Atheros earlier this year. The open ZyDAS drivers are still available. They have been moved (e.g. for the popular ZD1211B chipset) to
http://www.atheros.com/RD/ZyDAS/web_driver/ZD1211
Regards,
Walter.
Re:As someone that has been there (Score:1, Informative)
Re:As someone that has been there (Score:3, Informative)
My desktop runs all Seagate 7200.x 250GB drives. One 7200.8 and two 7200.9s. The two
Other than that one time, all three of my desktop drives, the two Momentus drives my laptop lives off of, and the Barracuda in my Xbox have all been extremely reliable. Neither I nor any of my roommates buy any HDs other than Seagates unless we have no choice (laptops) or the deal is great (WD Caviars from Woot run our media center).
try drive mirroring and DVD +R backup (Score:3, Informative)
With good backups (I use a rsync script for drive mirroring and a dar script for DVD archiving) the consequences of a hard drive failure generally mean 15 minutes taking the backup out of the mobile rack (unplugged and removed from the computer room when not in use) and put it in the drive slot and if the bad drive's in warranty, waiting for the replacement drive to come back and mirroring your main workstation (ex-backup) drive to it. . . loss a day or two's worth of files.
Note that I said DVD+R. . . I'd been using DVD -R for years (including a bare-metal restore) before I discovered that +R is more reliable.
Re:What about Intel? (Score:3, Informative)
Do you know what that daemon does, exactly? Does it have any security holes? Are you sure? Can you port it to other operating systems?
The 3945 is a terrible example of support, it's unacceptable for many of us (I'm not running Linux, for instance) and Intel deserves criticism over it, not support. In this case, it's far, far more than simply the firmware being closed (open firmware? neat for hardware hacking, but otherwise useless to me. I care far more about the drivers being open, and in all too many cases, they aren't...)