LinuxAnt's DriverLoader Loads Centrino Drivers

cRueLio writes "The latest release of Linuxant's DriverLoader can now load Centrino drivers. This is very useful, because Intel has been resisting the release of Linux Centrino drivers. For those of you who don't know, DriverLoader is practically a wrapper for Windows wireless drivers."

Comments

Mirror Early, Mirror Often!

[Scalli0n]

Mirror just in case that server (which seems piddly) gets /.'ed:

LINUXANT RELEASES NEW DRIVERLOADER(TM) FOR INTEL CENTRINO, INTERSIL, BROADCOM, ATHEROS, AND OTHER WIRELESS LAN DEVICES

MONTREAL, QC Oct. 27, 2003 - Linuxant inc., a world-class supplier of consulting, software development and professional support services is announcing the immediate availability of DriverLoader(TM) 1.2, a revolutionary compatibility-wrapper allowing standard Windows NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) drivers shipped by hardware vendors to be used as-is on Linux x86 systems.

The main highlight of this new release is significant compatibility improvements with simultaneous support for multiple Windows drivers. DriverLoader 1.2 now supports Intel PRO/Wireless (Centrino), Intersil Prism GT/Duette/Indigo, Broadcom, Atheros, and other Wireless LAN drivers for Windows.

Linuxant is committed to continue improving DriverLoader so that it becomes a fully compatible generic solution capable of running the majority of Windows NDIS drivers.

DriverLoader technology is the ideal Linux solution to support devices for which no adequate native open-source drivers are available. It also allows vendors to drastically reduce time to market or eliminate the need to support multiple drivers for Windows and Linux. By using the same NDIS driver on both platforms, significant resources can be saved. All Linux-specific code in DriverLoader remains open-source, allowing it to be used under any supported version of the kernel.

Thanks to DriverLoader, owners of Wireless LAN devices (CardBus and PCI) with compatible Windows drivers can now use their devices under Linux, enjoying the full speed of the latest Wireless LAN technology with the freedom of the renowned open-source operating-system.

DriverLoader packages can be downloaded from Linuxant's web site at no cost*. The software is easy to install on standard Linux distributions (RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, and derivatives) with any recent 2.4 or 2.6 kernel, and includes a user-friendly Web-based configuration system.

Vendors interested in using DriverLoader technology to enable their products under Linux should contact services@linuxant.com.

For more information or to download your copy of DriverLoader, please go to http://www.linuxant.com

About Linuxant Linuxant is a world-class supplier of consulting, software development and professional support services. Linuxant works closely with leading vendors and OEMs of semiconductor, PC, embedded and communication/wireless products, as well as with companies in other industries, providing technological expertise and solutions to maximize the potential of Linux and open-source. Additionally, Linuxant develops and distributes specialized system software, such as device drivers for specific applications.

* Linuxant is happy to provide free trial DriverLoader licenses, while discussions are under way with hardware vendors to finance development costs. Linuxant hopes that DriverLoader will remain free for end-users.

Sig & Below

Re:Mirror Early, Mirror Often!

[frostman]

Mirror just in case that server (which seems piddly) gets /.'ed...

But didn't Piddly just raise $2M for good causes?

Oh wait, different charity...

Why would Intel deny Linux of Centrino drivers?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is Intel thinking?
Why would it be in their interest to do so?
Intel should just be happy selling as many chips as possible.
Is Microsoft strong arming Intel yet again?

Re:Why would Intel deny Linux of Centrino drivers?

[CaptBubba]

According to Intel the real drivers are "in development" for the wireless chipset. Rumored release is in the first half of 2004.

Re:Why would Intel deny Linux of Centrino drivers?

[FRiC]

Intel doesn't even provide the Centrino PRO/Wireless drivers for Windows for download. It's up to the Centrino manufacturers to provider the drivers.

Re:Why would Intel deny Linux of Centrino drivers?

[tmk]

I think that could mean the LinuxAnts efforts. They probably heard about the development - perhaps they have given them their binary drivers - and put the positive information on their page.

Re:Why would Intel deny Linux of Centrino drivers?

[DrXym]

In other words, Linux is like a second run cinema. You get to see the film eventually, but only after the distributors have made their money elsewhere.

Perhaps Linux would improve the situation dramatically if it had a standardized (as in LSB) method for installing, uninstalling, signing, downloading and QA testing binary drivers which were guaranteed to work with any version of a major release, e.g. 2.4.x.

Aside from a few masochists who insist everything should be patched into their kernel and rebuilt, this is something that would benefit everyone and make Linux much more appealing to consumers which in turn makes it much more appealing to OEMs to support it.

The current situation where OEMs must cope with umpteen different kernels for umpteen different distributors is a joke. It must be a massive turnoff and frankly it's a wonder that the likes of NVidia even bother.

Re:Why would Intel deny Linux of Centrino drivers?

[Space]

It's probably an FCC problem. Europe allows different channels than thew United States. I believe the extra channels are in a secure military band. If Intel were to release enough information for the opensource community to write a driver Intel might be in trouble with the FCC for allowing, although indirectly, their customers to broadcast on military frequencies.

Re:Why would Intel deny Linux of Centrino drivers?

[Kanagawa]

Its definately an FCC problem. The newest a/b/g chipset drivers are what's called "software defined radios". SDR is a major regulartory nightmare for the FCC because they can be reprogrammed by the user (more or less). Hence, the FCC wants to see infrastructure on the card to authenticate the code that runs there [kernel discussion]. Annoyingly.

The madwifi project is developing drivers for the Atheros a/b/g chipset. I've been using them and they appear to be reasonably good, for the moment. But, the distribute with a uuencoded binary blob that unpacks into a kernel module... I hear there are access points on the market that are basically Atheros a/b/g mini-PCI cards inside a plastic casing.

On the flip side, at least Intel sees the need to convince the FCC to open spectrums [quote]:

A third major challenge facing SDR technology is convincing the FCC to open the radio spectrum. In the past, the FCC has regulated specific radio bands for different types of communications. A radio device is then licensed for use in only a specific frequency range. Intel and other industry leaders would like to see devices licensed for multiple radio spectra, rather than for only one communications band. This would allow manufacturers to make a single device that could broadcast and/or receive at any appropriate frequency. The frequency used for a specific type of communication could then depend on the device or user identification, such as for National Guard, police, fire, Air-Sea Rescue, animal control, border patrol, road construction, clean-water works, and so on.

What what?

[Safiire Arrowny]

So I can finally use my Linksys WMP11 with the crazy Broadcom chipset in Linux?


Please let it be so.

Re:What what?

[ActiveSX]

If your WMP11 uses an x86, sure.

Re:What what?

[Safiire Arrowny]

Yeah, I might be able to pull this off if they weren't such info hogs, That site is asking for everything but my mother's maiden name.

They want your name, email, address, phone number, MAC address! I think I might just pass this up rather than using mailinator, fake name/address, and ifconfiging my mac address to something else...

Toooo much trouble, I think.

Re:What what?

[op00to]

The drivers are written for the x86 platform. All driverloader does is just execute the driver code transparently, sort of like wine. Therefore, it won't run on a non-x86 archetecture. So if your router has an x86 processor, then you can use driverloader. If it has anything else, forget it.

Re:What what?

[strech]

They don't need a real name or anything. I think I just put a "-" for names and an obviously bad phone number (all 9s or something).

The MAC address is for the license key generation.

Of course, after all that I couldn't get it working properly (for a wmp54g - linksys, uses broadcom chipset) but that may have just been a messed up config somewhere.

windows drivers

[joe_bruin]

awesome. now linux too can have buggy drivers!

gotta wonder, did they implement the bluescreen feature?

Re:windows drivers

[shaitand]

I'll let you know as soon as I figure out what they are...

Re:windows drivers

[Quarters]

Your statement is funny because everyone knows that there has never been a faulty or buggy driver written for Linux!

(rolls eyes)

Re:windows drivers

[kasperd]

did they implement the bluescreen feature?

Otherwise it is available for download here: bsod.c. The really great part about this version is, that you can have bluescreen exactly when you want, I for one use it when it is about time to go to bed.

Re:windows drivers

[kasperd]

Way to go!

You may think you are anonymous, but you downloaded the bsod.c file from the reply page, so now I know your IP. Do you still feel anonymous? Anyway it is surprising to see how much interest people have in my bsod implementation for Linux. It has been downloaded almost 300 times since I wrote the comment. Does people really miss the bsod from Windows that much?

Re:windows drivers

[Tailhook]

now linux too can have buggy drivers!

I don't understand this. If the vendor puts out buggy Windows drivers why would their native Linux drivers be any better? Why would it matter whether it's an NDIS driver or something native to Linux? I presume you're a grown-up and it has occurred to you that contemporary hardware vendors will not generally provide sufficient technical information for Open Source developers to do better (but that's just me trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and I could be wrong.) There are, therefore, only two choices; emulate or do without.

NDIS is a de facto standard for network devices that has been around since the 80's. It astonishes me that using NDIS drivers in non-windows systems is a new idea. I personally could care less if there needs to be an adapter layer between the kernel and the driver. Drivers are grunt work with low value-add. Solving the driver mess is one major hurdle jumped to making Linux et al a realistic alternative to Windows.

If these Linuxant people want to resell their work more power to them. I'd pay for an adapter that would let me use DirectX drivers on Linux too. Eventually it would all get bundled into Linux distributions and cost me next to nothing anyhow. I want the latest hardware, working, today.

why

[Roryking]

Why do hardware manufacturers not release drivers for Linux (or for that matter any other non-Windows/Macintosh platform)? It would seem that the idea would be, more supported plaforms = wider customer base = more profit. I can understand how development might be an issue... but considering OS'es like Linux are open source, it would seem that development would be at least marginally easier and cheaper. Has anyone written/emailed/asked a HW maker this question? What was their reply?

Re:why

[stubear]

You're forgetting the part of the equation that deals with development time = drain on profits and if this drain > profits then it's not worth investing the development time.

Re:why

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to which you have to remember that it is impossible to realease up to date binary drivers for linux without having to constantly maintain 100 different versions for all the different kernel builds by Redhat/Suse/Mandrake/etc (forget about gentoo, slack or custom kernels). The only way hardware manufacturers could get out of that pain is by releasing the source for their drivers which many are hesitant to do. The module versioning issue is really a pain compared to say windows where a vendor can release drivers that he knows will pretty much work across multiple versions of windows. I think this has got to be holding driver development for linux back.

Re:why

[edwdig]

In the case of Linux, the problem is the kernel is an unstable target. A driver written for the 2.2 kernel won't work with the 2.4 kernel. Sometimes even a point release will break compatibility.

Now factor in that most users aren't going to compile their own kernel and drivers. So you need packaged versions. What distros do you package for? What versions of that distro? It very quickly becomes a lot to maintain for little benefit.

As to other OS's, they've got such small userbases it isn't worth the effort.

What should happen is companies should just release documentation on the hardware when appropriate. I can somewhat understand NVidia and ATI's reluctance, but someone like a network card vendor shouldn't care.

My biggest gripe is companies that change the chipset on a product without changing the model number. Sometimes it makes it really difficult to ensure you're getting hardware that works outside of windows - or that it meets your needs.

Re:why

[groomed]

They could just release the documentation.

Re:why

[rfmobile]

"The module versioning issue is really a pain compared to say windows where a vendor can release drivers that he knows will pretty much work across multiple versions of windows."

I can see you've never written a device driver for Windows. Microsoft DDK (device driver kits) are specific to each Windows version. Subsequent versions almost always break something.
-rick

Re:why

[Malc]

Point releases? Can't APIs be frozen?

Re:why

[anto]

If you try and maintain *binary* compatibility then yes the kernel is a horrible beast to slay. If however you choose to release the source to your driver it will pretty much work for a whole kernel tree - as a bonus if it breaks someone will have a patch to you before you even open the doors to your shiny fab plant the next morning.

-- This comment brought to you by too much happiness at the Melbourne Cup 2003..

Re:why

[Anonymous Coward]

So what. There are about 6 version of Windows. There are countless versions of Linux kernels in different distros or custom ones.

Re:why

[sholden]

Or you can simply release the code to a linux driver under a GPL compatible license and the various distributions will do the binary creation and distribution for you, free of charge even.

Re:why

[yanos]

it is impossible to realease up to date binary drivers for linux without having to constantly maintain 100 different versions for all the different kernel builds

why is that so? it's been a few years that nvidia does so.

Re:why

[frohike]

In the case of Linux, the problem is the kernel is an unstable target. A driver written for the 2.2 kernel won't work with the 2.4 kernel. Sometimes even a point release will break compatibility.

Now factor in that most users aren't going to compile their own kernel and drivers. So you need packaged versions. What distros do you package for? What versions of that distro? It very quickly becomes a lot to maintain for little benefit.

In the case of Windows, the problem is the OS is an unstable target. A driver written for the '98 kernel won't work with the 2000 kernel. Sometimes even a point release will break compatibility.

Now factor in that most users are going to use an OEM install. What OEMs do you package for? What service pack of that variant? It very quickly becomes a lot to maintain for little benefit.

I'm being a little facetious :) (yes I understand that a kernel patch/module is quite a lot more pain to make compatible across different versions than a Windows driver), but Windows drivers are not without their problems too. Hardware people just put up with them because of the size of the market. People like nVidia who have made fully unified drivers for all OS versions and all cards have done very similar and very successful things on Linux in the same way.

Re:why

[Pastis]

NVidia manages to do so. They have a small layer of code to maintain that can be recompiled when the kernel changes.

Anyway, if a company is not capable of splitting their driver into the adapting interface to the operating system (which should be mostly common with the Windows code anyway) and the driver itself, then the code is probably not well written and not well maintainable in the first place.

Re:why

[isj]

You forget how nvidia and vmware handles this. They provide their drivers as two parts: one binary closed-source part, and one source wrapper. This allows them to provide their driver as binary only, and let the wrapper be compiled to fit the kernel.
And if you are running a well-known kernel then the driver bundle includes the source part precompiled so you do not even need a compiler. NVidia even uses the same binary part for their drivers for windows and linux (ok, possibly compiled with different compilers), so the kernel version cannot really be the issue here.
I assume that Intel and NVidia has different strategies here for driver development. It seems that NVidia has a group developing the common part, and then different groups developing the OS-specific parts. I suspect that Intel is using distinct groups here instead, which means seperate resource allocation. Or maybe network drivers are just so different that Intel cannot make a common part?

Re:why

[binary paladin]

Ehhh... I'm running a box that's got 2.4.22 and 2.6.0test9 and both share the same nVidia driver. If a company actually consists of, I don't know, intelligent programmers it's obviously not a big deal.

Neverwinter Nights and Unreal Tournament run just fine in Linux. Carmack always releases his games multiplatform. Good, modular programmers who know how to use a computer and aren't a bunch of cheap hacks can actually do multiplatform releases just fine.

Plus, if anything, now is the time to support Linux. It's popularity is increasing. Get a loyal fan base early on and they'll remember you. The way I see it, a multiplatform release is not only a sign of good programming, but crap, if you release a Linux game it's going to be bought. You practically have a captive market. It's small, but it's not like there's a ton of competition yet.

Basically, there are two types of programmers:

1. Good programmers who think ahead and write portable code.
2. Cheap hacks that masquerade as programmers who don't write portable code.

Re:why

[whovian]

The only way hardware manufacturers could get out of that pain is by releasing the source

Why is this?

My experience causes me to disagree with you. By me NVidia has done just fine by releasing the "source code"" that wraps around their pre-compiled gfx binary drivers.

In fact, the only time I've had problems with NVidia was when I was using their pre-compiled RPMS they for whatever version X.Y of standard RedHat -- I've always rolled my own.

Re:why

[rfmobile]

It's all about features. If you code your driver for the lowest common denominator then you end up with a a very plain device driver. Sure it's useable, but does it support plug-and-play or any of a dozen incremental improvements offered by newer versions of Windows? The Windows 2K and XP folks will expect your driver to support all the nifty keen features that M$ promised to them.

Even differences between 2K and XP are significant. I tried "downgrading" from XP to 2K on a late-model laptop only to find that the video driver was XP only - the vendor did not support 2K for that model. Ouch. I was stuck in a VGA windows 640 x 480 pixels x 16 colors until I could move back to XP. In my case, the common denominator approach (bare VGA mode) was less than satisfactory.

-rick

Re:why

[shepd]

>There are about 6 version of Windows.

Oh, that number is mightly low...

Windows 1.0
Windows 2.0
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows NT 3.1
Windows NT 3.1 CSD001 Update i386
Windows NT 3.1 Kernel32 Update to SP-1 i386
Windows NT 3.1 Service Pack 3 i386
Windows NT 3.5
Windows NT 3.51
Windows NT 3.51 SP1
Windows NT 3.51 SP2
Windows NT 3.51 SP3
Windows NT 3.51 SP4
Windows NT 3.51 SP5
Windows NT 4.0
Windows NT 4.0 SP1
Windows NT 4.0 SP2
Windows NT 4.0 SP3
Windows NT 4.0 SP4
Windows NT 4.0 SP5
Windows NT 4.0 SP6
Windows NT 4.0 SP6a
Windows 95a
Windows 95b
Windows 95b-oem-2.1-USB
Windows 98
Windows 98 SE
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 SP1
Windows 2000 SP2
Windows 2000 SP3
Windows XP
Windows XP SP1
Windows XP SP1a

I get 37, and I'm not even including internet explorer versions, which are legitimately part of the OS, according to Microsoft themselves. That would EASILY double that number, I think.

Re:why

[drfreak]

You forgot Windows 2000 SP4. Good point, though.

Re:why

[bhtooefr]

You forgot the following:

Windows 1.0 started at 1.01 and went to 1.04
Windows 2.0 started at 2.03, and there were 2.10 and 2.11 versions
Windows 3.0 on 3.5" floppies was versioned 3.00a
Windows 3.1/3.11 were available in WFWG versions
Windows 95 OSR2.5 was the same as OSR2.1, but had a slightly modified kernel and IE4
Windows 2000 SP4, anyone?

Free?...or not?

[Scalli0n]

DriverLoader packages can be downloaded from Linuxant's web site at no cost*.

* Linuxant is happy to provide free trial DriverLoader licenses, while discussions are under way with hardware vendors to finance development costs. Linuxant hopes that DriverLoader will remain free for end-users.

Interesting. I'd hope that they get some money so that we can keep enjoying this, but at the same time, the words 'trial' and 'licenses' worry me a little. Been spending too much time GNU!

Re:Free?...or not?

[mikeee]

It's not 100% clear that Linuxant is in the clear here - you can make a pretty good case that DriverLoader is a derivative of the Linux kernel and thus subject to the GPL.

Re:Free?...or not?

[Spoing]

It's not 100% clear that Linuxant is in the clear here - you can make a pretty good case that DriverLoader is a derivative of the Linux kernel and thus subject to the GPL.

If they are doing what NVidia is doing -- open loader based on GPLed headers with binary propriatory part -- then they are in the clear.

Besides, they can still sell the GPLed part...it's just that they can't restrict redistribution. Any binary bridge (like NVidia's) isn't under the GPL, so that part can be under whatever licence they choose.

Wonderful.

[base3]

Now hardware vendors can blow off developing drivers for Linux. "Just download the wrapper and use the Win32 driver."

Re:Wonderful.

[bogie]

Your forgetting that most hardware vendors were NEVER going to provide hardware drivers in the first place. So what's more useful? A)Sitting around complaining that most hardware vendors continue to ignore linux even after years of asking for support or B) trying to work with what's available and provide support for hardware that currently doesn't work with linux?

Whining that this somehow is going to make porting linux drivers less likely completely ignores that fact that Linux drivers were never coming in the first place. I say more power to them.

The same goes for Wine. Up till very recently I used to think of it as a crutch that discourages proper porting. Bottom line is the big desktop ISV's Intuit, Adobe, Microsoft have passed on developing for linux. There is ZERO indication that this situation is going to be changing anytime soon. If using Win32 drivers/software is the only way to access drivers/software that will never be coming to Linux anyway, I say use it.

Could be, might be, hopefully will be coming to Linux someday in the distant future doesn't mean shit.

Re:Wonderful.

[WNight]

If Adobe, for instance, sees that a lot (10k or so) people are using Photoshop in Linux, they'll consider porting when there's competition. They'll realize that people in Linux are using their product, but that it may stop because a native program (with better performance and interface) is coming out. If nobody used Photoshop in Linux though, they'd never know it was a graphics platform, or that there was a market share to lose.

There are actually a ton of art shops using Linux, mostly (in my experience) to do with movies and animation. I don't doubt that they'd switch their graphics artists from Windows at some point, like they've switched their animators. And all the software in this area is weird and requires some education, the bit of extra education involved in Linux vs Windows wouldn't matter at all. If Adobe isn't listening to the growing number of Linux users, some other company will.

Re:Wonderful.

[iabervon]

Most vendor-released drivers are pretty bad, even when they bother to provide them. It's almost always better to have kernel hackers write drivers than get the hardware vendor to do it, anyway. Using a Win32 driver is a reasonable stopgap while native drivers are under development, if you've got some hardware that's not supported. In fact, if you're going to use vendor-supplied code, you might as well use a Win32 driver, since it's a fixed API that the vendor is likely familiar with, so they're less likely to make stupid mistakes with it.

Re:Wonderful.

[Ben Hutchings]

Most drivers are bad, vendor-released or not. Only the popular Linux drivers are really well-written; some of the others are horrible. When I say popular, I mean popular among developers and the companies that pay them, not necessarily among the general user base. Examples of bad drivers:

• ide-tape is a joke and ide-cd has major limitations. It turns out that you're better off mapping ATAPI to SCSI using ide-scsi and then using SCSI device class drivers (which is the approach NT takes too). Why do the ATAPI device class drivers exist at all?
• I've found and fixed a SCSI driver that originally worked only on little-endian systems and was crudely hacked to work on big-endian systems... only it did terrible things with casts and would crash if compiled with optimisations on.
• I used to use an Adaptec ISA SCSI card. These were pretty popular at the low end once. But the driver for these, aha152x, would crash the system in several releases in the 2.0.x series.

Re:Wonderful.

[scratchor]

Or vendors like Intel will finally feel an urge to come out with those long-promised drivers (even if they *are* binary only).

Linuxant doesn't work for me... Ah well, maybe one shouldn't expect being able to install it within the four hours I spent trying...

--nico

Re:Wonderful.

[swillden]

ide-cd has major limitations. It turns out that you're better off mapping ATAPI to SCSI using ide-scsi and then using SCSI device class drivers.

FYI, this has been fixed in 2.6. ide-cdrom has much better performance now, and has a sufficiently-complete ATAPI implementation that it can be used for writing, so the ide-scsi workaround is no longer necessary.

Seems to work for many..

[elemur]

I've been trying to get this working for a day or two without too much luck, but others on the mailing list are reporting success.

One good and important point.. yes, its using binary windows drivers, but they are trying to keep the whole project open source. They are going to hardware vendors who would otherwise like to support Linux, but don't want to port their code to a new architecture. Its a win/win for those who go along with it.

I've been working on getting the Intel Pro/Wireless 2100 card in my T40 working without too much luck yet, but I think its my local problem. Others report great success with the same card.

Re:Seems to work for many..

[skaffen42]

Its a win/win for those who go along with it.

I would have thought it was more a case of win/linux for those who go along with it. :)

Ouch. Did I actually just make a joke that lame?

Re:Seems to work for many..

[Jeffrey Baker]

Nobody is really asking the vendors to write and support drivers for Linux, sside from fanboy whining on Slashdot. In fact, vendor drivers for Linux always suck, so I'd rather avoid them. All we need, really, are datasheets! But for whatever reason the manufacturers have decided that documenting their products is a practice that belongs in the past. Ignoring implications for vendor feelings toward Linux, I think the DriverLoader is a neat hack.

Re:Seems to work for many..

[Cid Highwind]

But for whatever reason the manufacturers have decided that documenting their products is a practice that belongs in the past.

I think Intel decided releasing specs was a legal risk. (at least in the US) Apparently with the right driver code, the Centrino chip can be programmed to transmit more power than the legal limit and on frequencies outside the 2.4GHz unlicensed band.

Re:Seems to work for many..

[Jeffrey Baker]

This is commonly cited, but I've never seen any actual evidence. Looking at, for example, public information regarding Atheros' wireless chipsets, the RF bits include bandpass filtering to prevent the device from radiating in adjacent bands. No amount of register fiddling is going to change the underlying physics of the situation. My Cisco Aironet radio can be configured to radiate outside of power and band limits for most of the markets where it was sold, but that doesn't prevent them from releasing the source code to the driver.

I look at the situation like this: you could replace a capacitor or resistor or oscillator on the radio to make it out-of-spec, and maybe you could do the same thing by writing the wrong value in a register. But either way, the user is has to hack either the hardware or the software. Hardware hacking concerns don't prevent the sale of radios, and software hacking concerns shouldn't prevent the sale of radio drivers.

Re:Seems to work for many..

[shaitand]

except of course for the users, because those vendors would have eventually made native ports fo their drivers and now never will.

Re:Seems to work for many..

[praedor]

A load of crap. I can go to radio shack and build a transmitter that will broadcast in any reasonable band at whatever power level I see fit to set it up at. No one is being stopped from being able to build a "jammer" in any freq range they see fit in. The problem merely comes when you actually use it and are finally tracked down. Then it is time to pay the fine.

As it is not illegal to go to radio shack or any other similar store and buy parts to construct whateverthehellyouwant, it is a totally bullcrap argument to "worry" about what other people MIGHT do with a piece of hardware (a wlan card) produced by .

I took apart my old microwave oven. Right there is a nice noise jammer in the 2.4 gig range. High enough power to cook meat (literally, of course). If I so chose, I could plug that sucker in and broadcast it into the air, resulting in the jamming of any nearby air surveillance radars operating on the same freq. It was not illegal for me to take out the microwave generator and the microwave company isn't responsible if I use their hardware to transmit noise into the air. I can look to get into trouble if I do it (repeatedly) so that my location can be reasonably pinpointed (the ATC radar can at least give a general bearing to authorities from any given day I transmit).

As I did NOT use it thusly, no harm done...and again, there was nothing preventing me from cracking open MY microwave to get at its guts. Intel (and others) are blowing smoke up our arses.

Re:Seems to work for many..

[5KVGhost]

Hardware hacking concerns don't prevent the sale of radios, and software hacking concerns shouldn't prevent the sale of radio drivers.

Actually, hardware hacking concerns do prevent the sale of radios. A decade ago many scanner radios (basically programmable wideband recievers) were pulled off the market because they could be easily modified to recieve cellular phone conversations. The radios were redesigned to prevent access to those bands (or make the modifications prohibitively difficult.)

Good god!

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

Add an easy point and click way to setup ACPI and I could get rid of Windows on my laptop!
Oh wait, I did anyway. Not because I thought Linux worked better but because I hate Windows.

Re:Good god!

[PhoenixFlare]

Oh wait, I did anyway. Not because I thought Linux worked better but because I hate Windows.

And why did you feel the need to tell us this? Switching OSes out of blind hatred is supposed to be good or l33t somehow?

Re:Good god!

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

No need really. Neither good nor l33t. Enough to make you waste your time bitching.
Anyway, this is really cool for wireless in Linux.

Re:Good god!

[rsidd]

Switching OSes out of blind hatred is supposed to be good or l33t somehow?

With windows it's usually not blind hatred, it's hatred from close and intimate knowledge and experience.

I have Win XP on my laptop (couldn't buy without) but never use it. So some minor hardware stuff doesn't quite work right on linux, big deal. All the software works, I can get work done, while windows doesn't even ship with a decent text editor or an ssh client. If I'm forced to install cygwin for the most basic tools, I'd rather have linux.

Even though Intel should have...

[skank]

done this themselves, it is still good to see that it is now available on linux. I wish I would have known about this a couple of days ago, because I had someone call in for support to try to set up a redhat box thru a centrino chip. That is outside of the support offered at my call center, but I still didn't like having a linux guy (who are ussually my favorite customers, I use slackware, and linux guys ussually know what they are doing) yell at me cause his new laptop could not connect through a wireless router. It seems like a RH guy would know about compatibility list, but, oh well. Anyways, a big thanks to the guys responsible for this.

Re:Confirmation, please

[Zaffle]

And I quote, 2.4 or later.

Can someone actually second the idea that the driver bridge will actually run on a 2.6 kernel? I'm having to reboot back to 2.4 for the Cisco vpn driver, some of my hardware support, et al. I hope this isn't just another of those...

Confirmed, it does run on 2.6. Infact, they recommend it if you have ACPI problems. Though they say support is more difficult for 2.6 since its still evolving.

yeah, that was my first thought.

[twitter]

Now hardware vendors can blow off developing drivers for Linux. "Just download the wrapper and use the Win32 driver."

Yes, I hate the use of non-free drivers. They are buggy and don't get fixed or ported to new kernels. How Linuxant has managed to deal with the differnces between different versions of Windoze is beyond me. I got suckered into buying a wireless card with "Linux support". It tured out to have a binary module for a particular Red Hat kernel that was not easy to compile with my kernel version. It really sucked and I ended up just giving up.

If you think of this as a short term solution to the Microsoft monopoly problem you can smile. Hardware vendors can slip Linuxant specs on the side to make their card work. Linux ditributors can compile the wrapper to work with the correct kernel. What this means is that Microsoft can't punish hardware vendors for giving out information, because they won't know! The "careful dance" vendors have had to do is over. Wireless card makers won't have to worry about their card having "problems" on windoze platorms from the latest windoze "update". Once that happens, there will be no further need for the nasty windoze binaries. Hardware makers will then be able to compete on the basis of what their hardware does, not what M$ wants to "support".

Congratulations to Linuxant.

Fuck you Microsoft, you are circumvented.

Re:yeah, that was my first thought.

[jackb_guppy]

That was the first thought about 5 years ago when we at a linux meeting were talking about this idea.

We canned it for 2 reasons...

1) Hardware vendors will not write drivers for Linux because use the windows one!

2) NDIS API was copyrighten by M$. Did it get released?

Re:yeah, that was my first thought.

[kfg]

Fuck you Microsoft, you are circumvented.

Now, now. Is that any way to talk to a convicted violator of antitrust laws for abuse of monopoly powers who keeps asking us to "pick up the soap just one more time"?

KFG

Re:yeah, that was my first thought.

[42forty-two42]

Did you try the modules that came with the kernel? I once got a linksys card like that - but the driver for it ('tulip') had been integrated into the main source tree, so I didn't need the old 2.2 driver.

How have they done this?

[Zaffle]

I understand they have written a wrapper for the NDIS bindings in Windows, (I think, much the same way Wine is doing for the entire Windows API), but did they need to purchase anything/licenses etc from Microsoft?

If not, then is it possible to do this as open source, there-by removing the problem of this going commercial (much like Crossover)?

As I understand it, there is nothing stopping someone from writting a similar product and releasing it under an open source license.

Is there anything in particular that would stop someone from doing this?

Re:How have they done this?

[lintux]

As far as I know, LinuxAnt had to sign (pay?) an NDA before they could get the specifications needed to control the NDIS drivers.

Most open source hobbyists don't want to pay that money. And also, they wouldn't be able to release it as free software.

I certainly hope this LinuxAnt won't make manufacturers lazy. :-/

Re:FOR SLASHDOT OUTAGE AND BUGS, SEE TACO'S JOURNA

[Anonymous Coward]

He doesn't like to hear any criticism that might hurt his precious ego.

So, how does he differ from any other open-source developer?

Re:Offtopic

[decaying]

No images here at all at the moment....

just some notes...

[cRueLio]

No, there is no BSOD. But there are kernel panic messages, so u might wanna look at those if u want some memories of Windows. Also, not all the OEM centrino driers work. The one linked to on the Linuxant website worked just fine on my Dell 300m, but the one on the Dell website caused problems. The "trial" gave me about a month-long licence, but I guess they'll figure something out by then, or maybe I'll make a new hotmail email account and get a new licence or something. Then again, that might not work, since I don't know of any way to chamge the MAC address of one of the Centrino mini-pci cards. Watever, i'll stop typing now because i feel like i'm going into a rant. btw... its cool that they actually posted my story!!! yay!!!

Re:just some notes...

[edgedmurasame]

ifconfig [interface] down
ifconfig [interface] hw ether [desired mac address]
ifconfig [interface] up ... and go on with the rest of things.
Sure, you could keep on switching licenses, but I'd think paying them in this case might be less effort than having to change data around every so often...
(However, if you wanted to go deeper and change it on the card, you're on your own unless you know how to update the flash memory - if it has flashrom and not pure rom memory)

Re:just some notes...

[drfreak]

I actually looked for where I could *buy* the driver loader, but it seems they only have the free trials right now.

Re:Who cares about drivers?

[ScrewMaster]

I want to know when I can use Clippy in native Linux.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Grumblegrumblegrumble

[bersl2]

I still can't believe the bastards are now charging for full Conexant winmodem support... I use an older version, but no 2.6 support really sucks. Damn you Linuxant, you money-corrupted asshats!

</rant>

OK, I'm better now... been having WAAAY too much beer...

Re:Grumblegrumblegrumble

[PitaBred]

Because making money is bad, kids. You should do all work for free, especially if it's useful for only a minority of people.
Dumbass.

Re:Grumblegrumblegrumble

[bersl2]

Apparently you missed the entire "free (as in beer)" reference there. I'm not drunk.

Besides, I currently don't feel that strongly about the subject of charging for drivers for hardware I don't use anymore.

If I hadn't been joking, I wouldn't have gone after Linuxant, but Conexant instead, and the entire notion of the winmodem. So there!

Today'a paranoia is tommorow's reality

[MrLint]

I just have a bad feeling that some jackass company is going to make some spurious DMCA claim that the driver were licensed only for use under windows and using them in linux in any form is some kinda non-existent copyright violation.

I vaguely recall in the annals of history of being something similar to this happening but i just cant put my finger on it.

Re:Today'a paranoia is tommorow's reality

[cduffy]

What's their motivation? Your hardware is suddenly available to more customers, and your driver is still binary-only... what's not to like?

Re:Today'a paranoia is tommorow's reality

[MrLint]

Indeed what is the motivation. For instance, Garmin GPS wont work on the MacOS. Someone offered to write the drivers and app for free and garmin refused. The USB adapter wont even work under VPC (as i understand) it checks if its running under VPC.

You work out the reasons cause i sure as hell cant.

You forget

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

As soon as they release the source, the community maintains it. Try that with windows drivers.

Re:even more offtopic (sorry)

[ScrewMaster]

Not at all. What most people don't realize is that Slashdot passed the Turing Test some time ago. All those "Anonymous Cowards" are actually generated by a self-aware AI running in the background on Google's processor array.

Development effort

[mjander]

As someone who has participated in the development of a linux audio driver, and now i'm trying get it ported it to windows, writing drivers for linux is much easier than on windows.

-At first, there "are" linux developer competent enough. There are many willing to help, and stuff gets done.

-I still don't know anyone around me who is capable of writing a WDM driver, but i know quite a bunch of people who are writing kernel drivers all the time.

I guess, we linux (or BSD or what you like) developer should better write a Windows linux driver loader, so hardware makers can release linux only drivers.

Re:Development effort

[incom]

That's a pretty cool idea. Write a driver developement kit that by design makes the driver work on linux, and windows with an extra component. Just make the devel kit easy to use and understand, and excelerate production time enough that it would be used.

Re:Offtopic

[JabberWokky]

Mine are all coming up broken. Have been all day, along with the topic icons. I've been browsing elsewhere with zero problems.

Re:How come most of the Slashdot icons are broken?

[Chatmag]

A previously unknown software development company in Lower Slobbovia has been issued a patent for a method of placing pictures on web sites. Film, um, text, at 11.

Clippy in Linux!

[Avihson]

Hmmm... Lack of sleep makes you think of strange things:

Just yesterday I was cleaning out my collection of user donated/upgraded software and found an old copy of MS Bob - That's right, Bob!

Should I even consider the blasphemy of trying to see if it will run under Wine? Or just fire up a VMware session and give Clippy's ancestors a new lease on life?

What should I do with this paragon of MS Marketing Nonsense?

How badly must one crave Linux to do this?!

[Rat's_ass_donor]

At some point, isn't it easier to just run Win2K? As a former Amiga user, I remember what it was like to be a ghetto gang-banger. But, um, then I grew up.

Re:How badly must one crave Linux to do this?!

[binary paladin]

But as we all know only 1337 Microsoft haters use Linux. Not people like me who actually ENJOY Linux and the applications over the Windows offering.

My dad uses it too. Why? He's not very computer savvy, but guess what? I service his computer and Linux means I have to deal with no, "Well... reinstall X program or the OS all together." That's my PRIMARY beef with Windows. Something breaks or doesn't work in Linux, I can fix it. In Windows reinstall, pray. If that doesn't work, reload the OS and pray.

Re:How badly must one crave Linux to do this?!

[twistedcubic]

At some point, isn't it easier to just run Win2K?

And the obvious question is:
Should I give you my mailing address so that you can ship me the Windows 2000 software, since I can't afford to pay the $300 (or whatever it costs) for it?

I'm not being a smartass, I'm just making a valid point.

Re:How badly must one crave Linux to do this?!

[incom]

Most of the applications you've mentioned aren't the "premier" such application of it's type. For ex: K3b is imho the best cdburning application for linux, and it isn't terribly different from nero.

Re:How badly must one crave Linux to do this?!

[incom]

I actually like gaim, but if you want something different you could try kopete.

Re:Confirmation, please

[noda132]

I'm having to reboot back to 2.4 for the Cisco vpn driver

Though MPPE (weak Microsoft encryption) is not available for 2.6 *yet*, you might want to look into pptpclient. The web page tells you exactly how to set up ppp and everything. It'll connect to pretty much any Windows-ish (i.e., Cisco) VPN, and it's free. MPPE support needs a kernel patch for 2.4 and is on its way for 2.6.

Advantages: GPL, better documentation, the primary developer is very helpful on the mailing list. Disadvantage: maybe harder to set up (not sure, never tried the Cisco one).

I'll bet 2.6 will have MPPE support built in before Cisco releases a 2.6 version of its VPN client.

Re:Confirmation, please

[dieman]

Cisco is IPSEC with XAUTH, *not* MPPE.

Can I mod the story?

[fiftyfly]

Wow - a story submission that actually ensure we know wtf they're talking about! joy!

Re:Can I mod the story?

[cRueLio]

wow... thanks.... this is my first story to get posted (out of three attempts)! i like to think i know something about this topic since i am trying to switch my Dell 300m to Linux, and not having to reboot whenever I need to use the internet.

linuxant sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you DriverLoader fanatics? I've been sitting here at a cafe close to my freelance gig sipping a latte in front of a centrino Linux laptop running DriverLoader for about 4 hours now while it attempts to download a 17 kilobyte file from the internet. 4 hours. At home, on my Commodore 64 connecting to the Internet using a modem with an acoustic coupler connected using a speakerphone across the room, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this laptop, the same operation would take about 30 minutes. If that.

In addition, during this file transfer, Mozilla won't work. And my latte has gone cold waiting for a ssh session to negotiate. Even ed over a telnet session (unencrypted over wireless! insecure, I know, but I'm desperate) to my C64 running Lunix is straining to keep up as I type this.

I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Centrino laptops running DriverLoader, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a wirelessly connected centrino laptop that has run faster than its Commodore counterpart with acoustic-coupler speakerphone wireless, despite the Centrino's faster chip architecture. My Atari 2600 with 128 bytes of ram with avian carrier RFC1149 wireless runs faster than this centrino machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the LinuxLoader is a superior piece of software.

LinuxAnt addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use DriverLoader over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

Re:linuxant sucks

[cRueLio]

why do I choose it? Simple: i don't wanna buy a new miniPCI card and this is my only choice (until Intel releases a driver)

Re:linuxant sucks

[cool_bladelansmash.c]

The answer is simple kimosabi, grab a Mac notebook.

Re:linuxant sucks

[linefeed0]

Do you know it's a Linux problem? That is, have you gotten the centrino working properly in windows?

It's possible the access points you're connecting to have problems properly supporting Wi-Fi power saving mode, which the centrino (among many other new wireless chipsets) relies on. Basically, low-power Wi-Fi clients poll the AP for packets instead of listening all the time.

This is possibly why Intel is running that "verified with Centrino" campaign -- they found out too late that the corners they cut (not falling back from optional parts of the wi-fi spec) aren't compatible with the corners AP vendors cut.

Re:linuxant sucks

[praedor]

Ah, I see. A data point of 1. Very statistically robust. Perhaps if you try it on different wlans AND try the same coffee shop wlan on another day AND get the same crap results in all cases then you may have something there. You are perhaps too fast to blame the driver rather than the network. Come back when you have more data points.

driver only for 2.2 kernel

[JonnyRo88]

Yea, I had a similar problem with Linksys or D-Link, i cant remember. Both of them seem about as braindead when packaging products with a Linux label.

The driver they released only worked on the 2.2 kernel with some ungodly old version of redhat. That combined with the utter lack of understanding at their call centers of the fact that they wrote "Supports Linux" on the box, all they could do was offer me a new card, which they were also unsure would support linux.

I ended up saving myself a ton of trouble and bought myself a Senao 2511 EXT2 wireless card with the prism chipset. It works beautifully, and has 200mW of power.

I like the card so much that i'd almost consider getting a pci adaptor so i can put one in my desktop. However, I noticed that Ultramesh has some PCI cards for sale that use the prism chipset and have external antenna connectors.

Has anyone messed around with meshAP from locustworld?

Re:driver only for 2.2 kernel

[twistedcubic]

I have a Linksys PCI card with external, detachable antenna. It's a Prism2, and has a good range with the antenna. Plus, without the antenna I still get good reception inside. Works as an AP with the right firmware.

Re:driver only for 2.2 kernel

[JonnyRo88]

Which brand? Is that the WMP11?

Some of the manufacturers change their chipsets without changing the model number. It is quite frustrating.

I may be wrong about the spelling, but if I am correct about the model it is of the form W*11

Re:driver only for 2.2 kernel

[bhtooefr]

Especially when you have a WPC11 v4... really fun for a newb, trying to compile a new kernel for the rtl8180 drivers...

Why?

[Simple-Simmian]

Why the hell buy anything from a vendor who isn't OS nutral?
Intel can jam it up their crack.
Who the hell do they think they are Dell or HP with this MS only support crap?

I'll take a heavy power hungry AMD over the Centrino because of this.
How hard would it have been to release the data sheets in this processor and write example drivers? Using MS binaries isn't the way to do it right.
Blarg!

Re:Confirmation, please

[Benley]

I'm having to reboot back to 2.4 for the Cisco vpn driver,

There's a solution to that if you're using the Cisco VPN3000 client: this mailing list posting by a friend of mine explains how to make it work.

Which wireless hardware works with Free Software?

[jbn-o]

For those of us who want only Free Software, what wireless hardware works with Free Software drivers?

Happy customer

[aralin]

I have to say, that although binary, these drivers are very good. I am using them on my notebook and they just work. I had a little problem with 1.03 version, but since 1.20 they work very good. These people know what they are doing, they have download for every current kernel used in major versions of major distributions. And they want to provide that for free if the manufacturers chip in for their effort. I welcome that my internal wireless card is working NOW and not in 2004. Thank you, Linuxant.

Reverse Engineering

[Markus Registrada]

This is a Good Thing. Running the Windows driver in a wrapper on Linux makes it much easier to reverse-engineer. Anything discovered that way is free of vendors' non-disclosure agreements. This applies to lots of drivers, and lots of manufacturers, not just Intel and Centrino.

Re:Who cares about drivers?

[Valar]

It appears you are compiling your kernel, would you like some help?

Re:Need drivers? Use Mac OS X.

[mjander]

Amateur OS ? You surely never have used Linux :D About faster CPU, what can i say... I thought the same as you until i benchmarket a Apple XServer against a DELL PowerEdge 1650. The Apple... no chance. The i386 ruled at everything, even if i disliked very much the idea. How should i explain to my boss that those expensive XServer where crap ??. The only exciting stuff about th MAC: the user interface, but who cares about that in a Rack mount server ? Go advertising elsewhere. No more comments.

...In other news

[kcb93x]

I want to know when I can use Clippy in native Linux.

...In other news today...thousands of self-proclaimed 'slashdotters' heads exploded today, when one of their own (or a 'Microshaft' plant, as some call it) asked when the little Microsoft assistant would work under this 'Leeenux' thing.

Re:fuck u racist

[cRueLio]

oh ya btw, r u really romanian? because while it does mean "go in my dick" literally, if you knew romanian, you would now this is an idiom.

Meh.

[YOU ARE SUCH A FAG!]

NVidia has the right idea. It links a static lib against the interface code (which builds against the installed kernel) during the installer.

That should become standard practice.


Consider DKMS.

It's possible to achieve widespread compatibility, if the developers are paying attention, that is.

Don't use for Intersil or Atheros

[linefeed0]

The Intersil PrismGT chipset used in low-end 802.11g cards from Netgear/SMC/D-Link (not the turbo 108 variety), and the Atheros 5k family used in almost all turbo 108 mbps 802.11g cards and nearly all 802.11a cards have good native linux drivers which are either entirely or have the most significant parts as open source.

Although the DriverLoader apparently supports these cards, please support these companies in either helping develop Linux driver support or releasing specifications (both of which Intel and Broadcom adamantly refuse to do) by

a) purchasing their products when you have a choice (e.g. buy Pentium-M instead of Centrino and add on a third-party wireless card, and don't buy 802.11g products from Linksys or Dell which use Broadcom), and

b) Use the open-source drivers rather than emulating windows drivers, let the chip (Atheros and Globespan/Virata nee Intersil) and the card companies know that you appreciate their linux support. Report bugs and feedback to the open source projects, too.

It's nice to have something like this around as a stopgap way to load drivers for hardware made by manufacturers with poor linux support, and even as a way for manufacturers to ship initial drivers for linux inexpensively for them (and claim "linux support out of the box"), but it is no substitute for published specs and real drivers (which, with published specs, the companies don't even have to develop themselves).

Re:Don't use for Intersil or Atheros

[Daath]

...buy Pentium-M instead of Centrino...

Pentium-M and Centrino are one and the same.

WineX all over again.

[etymxris]

Remember when WineX said they would totally open-source all of their work, but only when they got enough "donations"? Well they started getting money and decided, "Well, gee, we really like getting paid for what we do. Forget about the whole open-souncing thing."

To be fair, the issue is slightly more complex than that, but this looks to me like another WineX. Don't ever expect Linuxant's product to be totally open-source. Furthermore, just as WineX only works for the most simple or popular of games, don't expect Linuxant's product to work but for the simplest or most popular drivers.

Re:WineX all over again.

[GoRK]

Linuxant pulled a similar stunt in the past. Please see my other comment for details...

~GoRK

Moderators beware, parent is a liar

[klafhat]

Parent says grandparent links to goatse, that is a lie.

Beware Linuxant! The future goes from bad to worse

[GoRK]

Linuxant has a short and torrid history in the Linux driver scene. They pretty well burst onto the scene after Marc Boucher got the rights from Conexant to develop kernel drivers for their HSF/HCF chipsets. Users enjoyed a couple years of very well supported drivers (apparently with the manufacturer's financial backing) until about two months ago when Linuxant "announced" their new and improved version of the HCF/HSF modem driver.

Guess what? They decided that development costs were too great and thus, they charge for it now. On top of that they removed all prior free releases of the driver (which worked just fine for all but some of the newest cards and/or some of the more esoteric modem features) from their website. There was no warning for this change, and they began sending marketing emails to their driver -announce list.

With this kind of history, I am wary of supporting any kind of use of their windows-driver wrappers for wireless cards. I am wary that I or my users will grow to rely on these drivers and then have the rug pulled from under our feet. I am wary that hardware manufacturers will grow indifferent to providing native Linux drivers while this product is available and works well. When the time comes that you have to fork out an extra $40 to Linuxant.

Please be aware that I am not opposed to Linuxant marketing their products commercially. It has been my experience that they produce very good work and code that does what it says. It's a shame that the hardware manufacturers cannot seem to support their work financially, as I believe it is in the manufacturers' best interests to see that their hardware works with a wide variety of software and operating systems. For Linuxant not to be up front about this matter is pretty low-brow.

The similarities to their namesake are striking... Linuxant: Keeping the business ideals of Conexant alive and well in the Linux community!

~GoRK

Re:Who cares about drivers?

[notyou2]

I'm scare to ask, but are you screaming in agony or screaming in orgasm?

Hrmmm.... is the term "clippyphile" already taken?

Performance?

[Jahf]

Anyone used these wrappers to say what type of performance they can achieve?

For instance, just putting traffic through a or NAT routine can take up to 10% speed hit if you have no other significant bottlenecks. Yeah, I know, my example isn't apples-to-apples, it's just meant to give an example of a performance hit.

I would imagine a wrapper, even for a completely bug-free alien driver, would have some form of performance degradation and/or extra CPU usage or both.

As a side note, I too am very afraid that this will further stifle linux native device driver support from commercial outfits.

Heh... I can see the "real" press release now...

[Bowie J. Poag]

Dear Intel,

...(half a page of empty space)...

pwned.

...(half a page of empty space)...

Sincerely,

the Linuxant team.

Good Linux Hacking

[tintruder]

Yesterday I got called a M$ Troll for comments on hacking an AP to put Linux on it.

But when I see something as useful as this, I have to hand it to the developers.

Now a whole family of contemporary laptops have been rendered fully functional under Linux.

Fully functional DESPITE THE INTENTIONAL NEGLECT BY THE CORE VENDORS.

One must wonder why OEM support for Linux is so fragmented; sometimes superb, sometimes completely absent.

Could it be that the financial aspects of Linux make it less appealing somehow? After all, it would be crazy for Intel et.al. to omit Windows support.

Good work guys!

Re:Which wireless hardware works with Free Softwar

[cduffy]

Just about any 802.11b hardware; it's the a/b/g stuff that doesn't have Linux drivers available (typically due to FCC regs not permitting release of programming specs for software radios which can be programmed to use bands they legally shouldn't be on -- which the a/b/g cards are).

Government inaction

[zymano]

Doesn't this tie in with the gov's case against Billsoft ?

The gov's case was half assed and therefore not a real cure to the monopoly. If they would have had a real plan then we would be getting source code from alot of these manufacturers . Believe it or not but these companies helped out the monopoly by only making software for one company and only one. The gov should have told these companies that they must opensource their drivers so other operating systems can use them.

The hardware and even the software companies play a part in helping uncle bill's monopoly .

So why shouldn't the gov play a part in breaking up this cozy relationship ?

Re:Which wireless hardware works with Free Softwar

[Anonymous Coward]

For 11b, see this page - most of those drivers are open-source.

For 11g, prism54 is the only open source driver I know of (or it will be once a license issue is resolved - there are still two non-GPL header files). There's a non-free firmware file you have to load onto the card, but IMHO that doesn't make the driver non-free - most modern devices contain firmware anyway, whether you upload it or not, and none of that binary code runs on your CPU or taints your kernel. The driver is still portable to other architectures, etc.

The Atheros madwifi drivers are partially open-source, but require you to load some binary code into your kernel. Personally I'd avoid this non-free driver, but many people are happy with it.

Bah! Opensource is better

[MrWorf]

Why (potentially) pay LinuxAnt for something when you can be a part of helping the community developing it's own equivalent.

Try ndiswrapper .. Works with the broadcom 4301 chipset (for the moment).

Re:Bah! Opensource is better

[praedor]

Uh, hello? The driveloader is free as in beer. It contains open and closed source components (they have no control over the closed portion and are thus unable to release it - don't blame Linuxant). You are NOT paying Linuxant for the downloading/use of driveloader. It is FREE. They indicate that it is their intention to keep it free (beer) as well.

Re:Bah! Opensource is better

[MrWorf]

Okay, so my formulation was a bit rough. Didn't mean to downplay the effort made by LinuxAnt. Also, I never said it wasn't free (notice the paranthesis I had around potentially).

Linux is all about choices, and if you like what you get from LinuxAnt, fine, go for it. But if want to tinker and make the world a better place to be (ahem ;)) then join the fray.

Also, for the record, I'd like to state that if you had looked closer into the actual way the LinuxAnt module work, you'd find a little file of 67kb named driverloader-<arch>.O which is magically linked with your module, and there is NO SOURCE FOR IT (sorry for the caps, the shift got stuck as yours did).
If this is the closed part that you refer to as "they have no control over", then you're wrong, this is the magic do-dah that does the wrapping. This is also their leverage should they decide to charge users money. So no, opensource, they aren't. Atleast no more than nVidia's binary X11 driver.

Btw, another advantage of the ndiswrapper is that there is no webinterface to configure the driver, which, in my book, is a good thing.

No problem, you can...

[plj]

I want to know when I can use Clippy in native Linux.

Now.

Re:even more offtopic (sorry)

[binary paladin]

Heh. My girlfriend was reading the other day and says to me, "Who is this Anonymous Coward fellow? He posts A LOT." I'm not sure she's ever going to live it down.

Re:Which wireless hardware works with Free Softwar

[LemonYellow]

Alas, not true. Any prism-based 802.11b hardware maybe, but there's not a lot of that around any more as far as I can tell. Lots of manufacturers are switching to Broadcom and ADMTek chipsets which appear to have no usable drivers.

OTOH, if I'm wrong please let me know. I want a wireless card for my desktop machine. Amazon.co.uk doesn't sell any that are supported, nor can I find any in London.

Re:Need drivers? Use Mac OS X.

[binary paladin]

I really loathe OS Nazis.

I think the reality here is that often you have to live in a 5000 square foot luxury mansion to use OSX in the first place. So I'll tell you what, you want me in that mansion. Email me so I can tell you where to send the check.

Sorry, I like OSX, but I like CHOICE in hardware just as much as CHOICE in software. Thanks but no thanks I just got out of one proprietary software platform and I have no interest in one that's got a hold of both hardware and software.

And ummm... you mean the professionals who... I dunno, borrowed Darwin, KHTML, etc? Those guys? I'll stick with the original authors.

And faster CPUs? You mean like AMD64s that are handing you Mac Nazis your asses back to you.

Think self-righteous assholes that are more annoying than Linux Zealots, think Apple!

Intel Driver Support for Wireless

[fuzzybunny]

I recently wrote a nice letter to Intel about the built-in wifi card on my ThinkPad X31, to ask whether Linux (or FreeBSD! Yay!) drivers would ever be available?

I got a very friendly response from them:


Hello John,

Thank you for contacting Intel(R) Technical Support.

In order for Linux to run on Intel(R) Centrino(TM) mobile technology-based systems,
software drivers are needed for the processor, chipset, and 802.11 wireless
components. Currently Linux drivers are available for the Intel(R) Pentium(R) M
processor and Intel(R) 855PM and 855GM chipsets. A Linux driver for the Intel(R)
PRO/Wireless 2100 wireless network connection is currently under development.

You can check back at the following link for the latest information on Linux driver
support for the Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 network connection.

http://support.intel.com/support/network/sb/cs-0 06 059-prd38.htm

Sincerely,
Roberto G.

Intel(R) Technical Support
http://support.intel.com

Intel is a registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the
United States and other countries.

*Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

->Hi there,
->
->I recently bought a Thinkpad X31, after great experiences with an X20.
->The only weakness is the lack of Linux/FreeBSD drivers (first thing
->I did was netboot FreeBSD and re-format XP off the drive) for the
->built in WiFi interface. I know there are currently no plans for these,
->but please consider this yet another happy X31 user, who'd love to see
->some nice person write a driver.
->
->Cheers,
->
->-John

Re:Intel Driver Support for Wireless

[mindriot]

What(R) a(R) really(R) nice(R) and(R) readable(R) reply(R). :-)

already done

[SHEENmaster]

xscreensaver has bluescreens, amiga crashes, sad apples, kernel panics, and more goodies! More importantly, your crashes won't disturb others.

Re:Which wireless hardware works with Free Softwar

[mindriot]

I have a LifeBook P-2120, which has a built-in Prism 2.5 chipset. Works fine with the orinoco_pci kernel module. I would've bought a Centrino notebook, but I didn't want to wait for a Linux driver, and, frankly, I don't see a binary driver wrapper as a good solution that I would trust. The P-2120 works fine for me and gives me five hours with its extended battery (even more with the modular bay battery).

Ignore previous post

[Daath]

The Centrino is a kit comprised of the Pentium-M, the 855 chipset and the PRO/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI card... My bad ;)
I still think, however, that the statement I commented on sounds "wrong" ;)

Atheros drivers aren't ready for prime time

[wowbagger]

I have an Atheros A/B/G PCI card, and I can say that the Madwifi drivers for this card just aren't ready for prime time - go read the various messages about this card if you don't believe me.

The drivers will crash the kernel, will sometimes simply stop working after a while, and when they are working, they do not transfer data anywhere near the theoretical limits of the card.

The card "sort of" work to access an access point, but if you want to use them to create an access point they just don't work in my experience - I could see the other devices trying to access the system, but the MadWiFi driver was not accepting the connections. This even though I had WEP turned off and had the ESSID's set the same. Furthurmore, the driver's diagnostics simply could not tell me WHY the packets were being dropped.

Yes, the way to improve the native driver is to give feedback, to hack the code, and to try to improve that driver, rather than using the Windows driver, but please do not give people the impression that the Atheros drivers are anything other than extremely pre-alpha and unstable.

The real solution here is to pressure the card drivers to design the cards so that the system driver cannot be made to violate FCC/DTI/... specs - a microcontroller embedded on the card to control the RF adds $.25 to the bill of materials (less if integrated into the ASICs in the card) and would completely remove the problem of open-sourcing the drivers.

Re:Beware Linuxant! The future goes from bad to wo

[bigjnsa500]

Your statement is completely wrong my friend. The free drivers are still available but software locked to 14.4kbps. If you want the full drivers you don't have to pay $40 like you said. The full drivers are $14.95.

Check the website before you rant with wrong figures.

Have a good day!

Same problem with printer and camera

[abe ferlman]

I had roughly the same problem with a Lexmark Printer/Concord Digital Camera combo I picked up at Walmart. I was super excited to see linux support on the side of the box.

Turns out, a. the support was binary only and would not be updated for future versions of linux: Redhat 7 or 8 only please b. the support is for the printer only, even though there's nothing on the package to indicate this.

I spent a week sending plaintive emails to Concord asking them to live up to their packaging to no avail. Finally I discovered that there was a USB mass storage driver on the camera that worked fine with Linux. This made me very angry to say the least.

This is why free software is so important. You don't want to be at the mercy of a company any time you want to wipe your ass. Do we really want nvidia-style binary only drivers for every piece of hardware in our computers? Because that's what's starting to happen. You can no longer get modern free software drivers for 3d accelerated video since ATI stopped releasing the specs on their cards after the Radeon 9200 series. If Linux one day wakes up and realizes it depends on proprietary, nonfree Windows drivers to function, guess who wins?

I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that Microsoft funded this venture. It would be a keen strategy for them- they can't embrace and extend linux directly, but they can hobble it by making it depend on nonfree software.

Interesting, but...

[mwood]

...if Intel doesn't want any Linux business, let's just not give them (or their OEMs) any.

This was my exact fear

[nurb432]

I had mentioned this earlier when this topic of binary wrappers came up, and i was told i was nuts..

I guess now that we actually see the ramifications ' why bother makding a driver for OS xyz ' its not so cool afterall...

Re:Offtopic

[los furtive]

Whoa, did you answer because you're a Ned's fan, or is this just some freaky coincidence?

Re:even more offtopic (sorry)

[BeatdownGeek]

your girlfriend reads /.??? I should be so lucky...

NVIDIA

[Ender Ryan]

The difference is simply that NVIDIA has competent driver writers. NVIDIA has a binary driver, with a very small source-based wrapper, and they wrote a simple installer that handles building it.

Their Linux driver is based on their Windows driver, and shares 90%+ of the same code.

OTOH, that's not to say that you don't have a valid point, distributing binary drivers for Linux could definately be easier. I think that "problem" has been ignored so far because a lot of kernel developers don't want to encourage distribution of binary drivers, which is understandable, IMO.

BTW, you don't have to patch your kernel to add new drivers, there are plenty of drivers distributed as source that will build against the existing kernel.

Re:NVIDIA

[DrXym]

The difference is simply that NVIDIA has competent driver writers. NVIDIA has a binary driver, with a very small source-based wrapper, and they wrote a simple installer that handles building it.

I would assume that most manufacturers have competant driver writers and they'd be made more competant if they weren't required to reinvent the wheel each time. The case of NVidia is interesting. It's good they offer drivers, but they are a major pain to obtain to obtain and require you have a clue about shell scripts and other technicalities (e.g. running as root, exiting from X before installing them etc.). Why can't they be shipped with the dist? And if that is not possible for one reason or another, why can't SUSE / Mandrake / RedHat hold your hand and take you to them once the rest of installation is done?

Even if they did grab the installer and run it for you, NVidia demonstrates another problem withthe 'roll your own' situation in Linux. Their installer didn't like my RH9.0 umask (set by default in the OS) and installed files with the wrong permissions. A standard and dist-neutral driver installer mechanism would obviate all these sort of pitfalls.

BTW, you don't have to patch your kernel to add new drivers, there are plenty of drivers distributed as source that will build against the existing kernel.

Which still assumes you have the kernel headers and a complete toolchain. This blows out of the water any chance your average Lindows user might have of installing whatever-it-is. Of course you might get lucky and find a binary module compiled against your particular kernel, but then again you might not.

Anyway I think the dist makers should band together and recognize this is a shared problem and produce the tools and testing labs which allow vendors to produce a single working, signed and tested driver that will run with one dist to the next. Kernel hackers might not care for binary compatibility but I find it hard to believe that such a thing is impossible for dist makers to add.

Re:Which wireless hardware works with Free Softwar

[Just Some Guy]

I feel so... dirty... for saying this, but:

I finally ended up with a Microsoft MN-520 Prism card and the WLAN-NG drivers.

I live in a smallish town where the hardware vendor with the largest selection is Office Max. I bought, literally, 5 NICs over the course of a week. All were either unsupported (usually Broadcom chipsets) or required a newer OS than would run comfortably on the little laptop I was using. The Microsoft kit ($70 for a base station and one PCMCIA NIC) just worked out of the box.

I tell you what drove me nuts:

• Finding out that a DL-650 and a DL-650+ are completely different architectures; the former is supported, the latter isn't.
• Another card (Netgear? I forget) neglected to bump the model number when switching from Prism to Broadcom. Version 2 of the card (look all over the box for a tiny version number) is supported, version 3 isn't.

When and if you do your research and decide on a card, be sure to buy that exact model and version. Don't make my mistake and assume that a version bump only probably refers to the Windows drivers or AOL software or whatever else ships with it.

Re:Beware Linuxant! The future goes from bad to wo

[Laur]

Your statement is completely wrong my friend. The free drivers are still available but software locked to 14.4kbps. If you want the full drivers you don't have to pay $40 like you said. The full drivers are $14.95.

No, the OP is not wrong. The original free drivers which offered full performance were removed and replaced with crippled drivers. Also, he never said that the full drivers cost $40, he was just illustrating a point about possibly having to pay for these new wireless driver wrappers in the future (he apparantly just made up the $40 figure), however the $40 was not referring to the price of the modem drivers. Besides, I believe that $14.95 is much too high a price for the modem drivers, considring that this is about the price of a brand new PCI 56K winmodem nowadays.

Re:fuck u racist

[cRueLio]

i-mi pare rau, dar cite limbi vorbiti dumnea-voastra? eu vorbesc patru.

Re:Beware Linuxant! The future goes from bad to wo

[bigjnsa500]

So how does the programmer recoup his cost of buying a license from Conexant? I too believe in free software, but in this case the programmers have to recoup their cost of the license. What is wrong with that?

Re:FOR SLASHDOT OUTAGE AND BUGS, SEE TACO'S JOURNA

[Trelane]

s/ open-source //;

But what if....

[freeze128]

Suppose microsoft adds some sort of requirement to it's WHQL certification that makes it unable to work with DriverLoader? That would mean Microsoft is screwing us all over again.

Re:Beware Linuxant! The future goes from bad to wo

[bigjnsa500]

Then maybe you should quit whining and consider purchasing hardware that is known to work with open source drivers.

If you really are buying $15 modems then you should know you get what you pay for.

Or better yet, take up C++ and contribute to the project.

Add an x86 emu and...

[n1ywb]

If DriverLoader could incorporate a lightweight x86 emulator, then it could easily support those chipsets on non-x86 platforms, like PowerBooks, for example, or maybe even Zaurus's (Zauri?), etc. I guess that's kind of a small market, but it would be cool.

Don't think that's too whacky, either. XFree86 already uses that trick to execute x86 video card BIOS code on non-x86 platforms.

Actually

[voxel]

They put in saftey precautions into the driver wrapper so blue screens of death should only occur as little as 1/10th the times it does on a real windows machine.

Re:Who cares about drivers?

[ScrewMaster]

Well, technically, screaming in orgasm is "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!" and screaming in agony is "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Re:Beware Linuxant! The future goes from bad to wo

[MrWorf]

Or better yet, take up C++ and contribute to the project.

I wasn't aware that it was possible to contribute, especially since the actual code that does anything worthwhile (ie, the wrapping) is distributed as binary only.

Or did you refer to ndiswrapper?

Re:Which wireless hardware works with Free Softwar

[cduffy]

Almost all of the 802.11b cards I run into are Orinoco-based, and work fine with Linux. I've mostly just seen the Broadcom chipsets used on cards supporting a or g, rarely on b-only cards.

Then again, I'm in the states; perhaps, for whatever reason, there are some availability differences.