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Linux Centrino Driver Update
Edy52285 writes "An article on News.com talks about how Intel has been, and still is, dragging on releasing their Linux drivers for Centrino. Intel is reluctant to release its drivers as open source since doing so would reveal secrets about their wireless hardware. Linux in currently unable to take advantage of Centrino's wireless networking devices, without, that is, prying $20 from your thin wallet to buy Linuxant's DriverLoader (discussed in an earlier story). Will Swope (Intel's General Manager of Software and Solutions Group) said in an interview said "What I believe will happen is we will end up having a Linux compatibility driver that is not open source at first, then designing future drivers in such a way that they are open source but will not expose intellectual property," Intel seem to be taking its time on releasing the drivers, and even in the article, there is a lack of any commitment on a date or under what conditions the drivers will be released." Also, someone pointed out that it's worth checking out ndiswrapper for the driver.
Hardware details -- it's like a chef not wanting to talk about his latest recipie, because that's the big secret. Sure, you and I probably don't have the cookware (hardware fab plant), but other restaurants (AMD and Qualcomm) would probably be very interested.
Why don't they do like nVidia, release a pre-compiled binary driver core and an open-source, compilable interface, which hopefully will manage to unify all diferences between different kernel versions and distros ?
Alvie
Only buy opensource supported products. The demand
will drive the market. This is also what we would need to do as soon as the PC gets locked up with
the new Award Bios. Demand has to be so low that it
will just about drive the home PC vendors out of business. then and only then DRM will be dropped.
I'm stocking up on some hardware now, that way if my
desktop or firewall does die, I can build a new one.
Think like a capitalist and vote with your wallet.
Until they have a proper Linux driver, buy an AMD based system instead.
So we get all the bugginess of a windows driver giftwrapped in the bugginess of a linux alpha wrapper...
1. Don't give specifications away
2. Tech-savvy high-end linux users don't buy your product
3. ???
4. Profit???
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
"Intel is hesitant to provide the information that will allow people to write a driver for Linux, because that information would necessarily provide 100% of the software engineering necessary for someone else to create a Centrino-like hardware solution."
Well, that sucks for them. Perhaps they should have built a real wireless device rather than taking away CPU time for something that is best handled by a seperate device.
This revealed, do most linux users even want a Centrino-based laptop?
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I know that the word is taboo around here, but isn't this precicely what (hardware) patents are for? From what I understand, they are pretty easy to get.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Intel's entire strategy over the last 10 years has been precisely to move as many functions as possible into the CPU. This enables them to justify selling processors with far more horsepower than anybody needs for word processing or browsing, and it lets them assert control and influence over a much larger fraction of the hardware market.
That's why they keep adding more multimedia-oriented units to their architecture; it's also why they designed the P4's memory architecture to be mainly good at streaming blocks of video data.
Their strategy has been relatively successful up to now. There's just no way that they would design a totally stand-alone wireless solution to be tightly marketed with their CPUs.
In fact, just from the Centrino marketing material, you'd get the impression that the CPU itself is handling the wireless functions. Perhaps they plan to move that logic into a future mobile CPU chip.
No its not....
Intel has made it very clear when they announced the Centrino chipset they would support Linux.
Well they haven't, their video chipset has a broken bios and no documentation and their wireless chipset has no documentation.
For the videochip there is some binary only stuff that only works with a very limited set of kernels and X versions.
For the wireless chip there still isn't even a driver.
The promises are getting dated and the hardware is getting dated. The only thing new comming out of intel is PR bullshit.
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
(AMD and Qualcomm) would probably be very interested.
Those guys are probably the least interested. Their engineers know exactly how to make similar devices. The only ones that might be interested are some third world country's bootleg industry. And they can/will reverse engineer the devices anyhow.
All these "Oh, we can't release the specs, that would reveal our secrets!", are pretty full of it. There are very, very few hardware/software solutions that aren't widely known. It gets really silly when companies such as NVidia refuse to release info to the XFree community, due to their hardware secrets. For heaven's sake! Even the insides of such (more or less) proprietary devices as the PS2, the GameCube, and so on are well known...