Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Where To Find Linux 802.11g Support Resources?

Posted by timothy on from the chicken-and-egg-problem dept.

Matey-O writes "I just purchased a Linksys firewall/switch router (WAP54g) and two of their 802.11g cards for home use. Like MANY things linux, I found out after the fact that Linksys' 54g products use a different chipset (broadcom) rather than the intersil Prism chipsets of their linux supported 11b products. So my _main_ question is: does anybody know if/when the broadcom chipset will be supported? Google wasn't very helpful, it came up with an online petition to another Broadcom product, but neither Broadcom, not Linksys plan support for linux soon. My secondary question is: Just where does one go to get info on 'cutting edge' linux development? I've used Linux off and on for years, but never needed to see what was going on this deep into the kernel, nor do I know where to look to see if any development is occurring for this chipset. (meanwhile, RH8 is dormant on the laptop as the XP support is adequate.)"

3 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. mailing lists by Ayanami+Rei · · Score: 4, Informative

    The only place to get real up-to-the-minute support for hardware is the many mailing lists dedicated to various projects.

    Search google for lists or list plus:

    linux-wlan, linux-usb, gatos, v4l
    etc...

    Main developers for a hardware series have mailing lists. More often than not, you can actually get their attention that way (or at least, get an issue out there).

    I have had good success with the linux-wlan mailing lists for doing weird things with wireless cards in the past (granted they were all prism2 cookie-cutter). But the spirit is the same.

    What I find is that because creating drivers for devices in linux can be so difficult, you really need a web page dedicated to the task. Because of this, we won't see a central site for driver development. The only centralization happens when they get chosen for bundling with the kernel.

    --
    THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
  2. Kernel Traffic by Hard_Code · · Score: 1, Informative

    Kernel Traffic

    Huzzah!

    Now give me a cookie.

    --

    It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
  3. Google sez... by benjamindees · · Score: 2, Informative
    In this product brief, Broadcom claims to have "embedded drivers for Linux" for their "Airforce" 802.11b/g chipset.

    And this FAQ says "the OneDriver software that ships with AirForce solutions uses the same driver for 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g, so that customers of our 802.11b solution will be able to upgrade to the newer high-speed standards without changing their PCâ(TM)s software image."

    Mailing list discussions seem to indicate that there are developers willing to write drivers to support Broadcom chipsets, but Broadcom is not "forthcoming with specs."

    --
    "I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"