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

windows drivers

[joe_bruin]

awesome. now linux too can have buggy drivers!

gotta wonder, did they implement the bluescreen feature?

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

[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.

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!

Wonderful.

[base3]

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

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: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?

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.

You forget

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

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

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.

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.

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).

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