First, WinModems. Now, WinWiFi.

zulux writes "Microsoft is actively encouraging WiFi (802.11b) hardware manufacturers to strip their devices of costly electronics, and use Microsoft software/drivers to make up the slack. And you thought WinModems were bad!"

Comments

Open-source troubles again

[jquirke]

Some of you have commented on the possible performance implications of "soft" WiFi, but there is an even bigger issue, the same reason we hated WinModems so much.

If the software routines / hardware API is kept proprietary, which is likely the case, us Linux/FreeBSD/other open-source OS users will be left in the dark.

Either [a] hardware vendor thinks they will look good and support Linux by releasing a binary-only driver that is only compatible with kernel version X, and needs to be hacked to work with anything else, FreeBSD users like myself are out of luck (and anyway I would _never_ use a binary-only driver in an open-source kernel - hence my gripes with NVIDIA).

or [b] some of the brave of us attempt to reverse-engineer Windows drivers.

Either way, consider the next wave of laptops coming with built in "soft" WiFi - a definite possibility considering the amount of money manufacturers could save, and offer WiFi standard even on their lowest-end models. This means chances are we have to fork out and buy a traditional PCMCIA hardware adapter. And a lot of us run Linux/FreeBSD/whatever on our notebooks, I know I won't be happy. I think I'll be paying the $US45 for an 802.11b card while I can!

Which raises another interesting point - you may think "yeah there will always be hardware PCMCIA WiFi cards". But look what happened to 56k modems - try and find a 56k modem on a PCI card that isn't a soft-modem!

Of course this is not bad for everybody - the new cheap WiFi will be more widely spread since 99% of computers run Windows NT/Windows anyway, and this good be a good thing for prices of WiFi cards,etc.

--jquirke

Does it matter?

[JabberWokky]

Yes, you're looking at a situation where you're trading off CPU power for the operation of a peripheral. I don't really like that myself. But really - how does this affect Linux?

Everybody seems to be making the assumption that there won't be drivers. Why not? Linux has a small but appreciable market share, and that market share is more apt to get WiFi than most other users. Unlike the situation when WinModems first came out, there is a viable base and thus economic incentive to release Linux drivers.

Now, let's hope they come with source - too many chipsets require that the end manufacturer can't release open source drivers. mda_hal.o and the like are workable, but not optimal - to a certain extent, open source drivers for software driven accessories like the so called Win* hardware makes it *more* powerful for the open source realm, where talented hackers can alter and upgrade the drivers to drive the hardware beyond the original specifications, purposes and features that were originally designed for it.

--
Evan