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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.
...I won't buy a "Centrino" laptop. That's fine, since Apple's laptops are looking more appealing anyway, and still run Linux. Some of those new AMD offerings in mobile computing, as well as Tranmeta's installation in some of the Sony lines make them nice options as well.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
We had exactly this problem.
Our solution was to write a proprietry driver, and then write a wrapper for this to interface it to the kernel. Release the wrapper under the GPL, then release our proprietry software as closed source.
Intel has been using linux to bring up there new products for years. If they want to protect there ip then the least they can do is release a driver in the manner of the nvidia driver is release. Sure I would perfer a total open source driver but baby steps would be ok for now.
The whole Centrino bit is a textbook monopolist tactic called a tying agreement. Intel can skirt around it because its still offering the pentium-m, but with no marketing support. The general customer is really confused and assumes that if the laptop does not have the centrino sticker, its not the best one.
Trying to obscure hardware by only handing out binary-only drivers and hiding the API from the average programmer does not help at all against professional counterfeiting / industrial espionage. But it's quite amusing to see a company like Intel play the security-by-obscurity song.
They should know better.
next generation of laptops considering Broadcom & Philips have already cooked up
their own even lower power chipset.
I won't make any claims on the validity of these numbers{---Google Cache
Since i couldn't find the Yahoo Article they mention
- $12 a chipset
- 97% less power consumption than Intel Centrino in standby mode
- 70% less transmit power consumption
- 90% less receive power consumption
- 802.11g "not that far away"
~And this was October 2003
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
But wouldn't it be obvious that your stealing their IP? If Intel found out, they can just sue them. I'm sure the tech is patented so AMD would have to license it to use it anyway.
Indeed. If you look at the Linux Atheros driver, Atheros and/or the people who licensed the proprietary bits from them provide a Hardware Access Layer (HAL) module that's binary-only. The rest of the driver can then just be GPL; the HAL takes care of hiding the precise details of talking to the card and doing all the FCC-compliance bits.
I bought the Intel card because I had the choice of Broadcom, which TMK has zero plans to release a Linux driver, and Intel, which has announced plans to. Both suck and will require ndiswrapper, but at least I can theoretically get native drivers for the Intel card in the future. [I just bought a Dell, after trying to get a laptop from other vendors for about 5 months; those were the options for the wifi card.]
I like your method, though. The problem with a HAL driver module is that it has to support your kernel; a .o file that gets wrapped into a module will be able to deal with different kernels better than having the binary bits be a whole module. niiiice.
--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Are a pain in the ass. I noticed this the day a colleague tried to install Windows 1900 on a "Made for XP" notebook. OEM drivers were nowhere to be found, and all the new drivers refused to install because they were "optimized for XP." The CDs that came with the machine were only "disk image restore" CDs. so re-installing the OS was impossible.
Linux (Red Hat 9), of course, installed without so much as an extra line feed, and supported each and every device perfectly. This was a fairly new notebook as well. It was amazing.
Can't figure out why manufacturers go out of their way to make it difficult for people to work with their own computers the way they want. Centrino should be supported, especially with notebooks being as expensive as they are.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
Since then I haven't wasted a single second searching for drivers or wrestling with hardware to get it to work. Sleep and restore works 100% of the time. Bluetooth and wireless LAN are bulletproof. I'd almost forgotten what it was like until I read this article.
Distrust begets distrust. Secrets beget snooping. If someone (Intel) is going to be so damned hypocritical and lavish in Linux's support of it's product lines (especially the nice early Itanium support while Microsoft was getting is OS finished) they had better not complain when someone "hacks" a solution out of the chip.
It's like the who DVD-CSS mess. Linux people just wanted to be able to watch DVD's without runnning Windows. What resulted was a hack that made convertion of DVD's into cheap Divx copies easy and painless.
It feels like dating someone who never trusts you, never earns your trust (or respect) and goes hysterical when you don't behave exactly how they want. Reminds me of an ex-girlfriend, frankly.
Murray Todd Williams
If that's the real reason, how come they release them as binaries? Reverse engineering will reveal exactly the same information (eh, sorry, intellectual property) as inspecting the source code, although it takes a little bit more work. So, does anyone think Intel gave the real reason?
I got a Dell Inspiron 8600 with Centrino technology and am typing on it now. It has a 1.4GHz Pentium-M processor. I got it for the battery life, I can do average (not idle) tasks for over 4 hours straight on the single 72 watt-hour battery (a second is available). I tried and successfully put a Knoppix CD in the drive and it booted up fine. It works but I probably can't get the same longer battery life. I'm pretty happy with this laptop, and squeezing another hour out of a battery on an operating system I don't primarily use isn't going to make me regret my decision.
"Chipzilla and M$ have been "in bed" together for many years, and we all know how Microsoft feels about Linux."
I don't think Intel is in bed with Microsoft, at least not exclusively. I remember at one point Intel helped Be inc. (Creators of the now long-dead Be Operating System) to optimize their software for Intel processors. I also doubt Intel hates Linux, I bet they get lots of revenue from servers being converted to x86+Linux.
I think the delay in Linux Centrino drivers is mostly due to simple economics. Whether we like it or not, most people don't use Linux on their laptop. Writing Linux drivers is a secondary objective, because it would hardly get them any extra revenue.
Maybe they don't want people to have access to it because the hardware could be used for other things than just wireless LAN.
Depending on the hardware, who knows maybe someone could even implement GSM/PCS on it. Whatever may be the case, having access to hardware like this would allow people to play around with it.
What is SDR?
GNU SDR implementation
Err, the whole point of "Centrino" is marketing, pure and simple.
The term "Centrino" is a 100% pure marketing term. There is absolutely ZERO technology connected to it, it just means that you are using an Intel Pentium M processor with a an Intel motherboard chipset and an Intel wifi chip.
The trick behind all this though is that if you combine those three elements then Intel will give you MUCHO-$$$ for marketing purposes. Last year Intel gave out $300 million to the likes of Toshiba and Dell to market their Centrino laptops I would not be at all surprised if it turned out that it was CHEAPER to add in an Intel WiFi chip than to have no wifi chip at all once you factor in the advertising bonuses. So that $12 Broadcom chip could well be $14 or $15 more expensive than an Intel one.
Based on their (lack of) responsiveness so far, I would not recommend them. I have switched to using the madwifi driver (with a different wireless card).
I don't really buy this. I've worked with 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz software controlled radio chipsets from both Chipcon and Rockwell. Nobody ever does any background check on me or anything. Nobody has ever made me sign something saying I won't program it to interfere with other equipment. Nobody has ever said they would need to audit any firmware/software I wrote for it. Nobody has ever even charged me for a dev kit. They throw a dev kit at me, and say "Have fun!"
Granted, these are the chipsets all by themselves, and not something a typical user could do anything with except fry with static.
And of course, my final products have to meet the specs in order to get FCC approval. But did you know that the firmware on the unit which the FCC tests doesn't have to be the same firmware shipped in production units! In fact, it's common practice to give the FCC testing labs special testing firmware. It doesn't even need to be fully functional. All it needs to do is the unit's "primary function." For instance, there are many handheld radio transmitters with keypads out there. Keypad scanning circuits tend to be really noisy, espcially on some microcontrollers. So you have special test firmware that starts transmitting when you press a key, and stops scanning the keyboard once you press that key. The FCC tester doesn't start measuring the emissions until the device it transmitting (it's "primary function"). Since the keypad has stopped scanning, it's no longer generating that noise and passes the test. Yes, the FCC tester is fully aware that they using "test-only" firmware!