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Intel Releases Linux Driver For Centrino WLAN
Werner Heuser writes "Finally Intel has made their different announcements about
Linux support for the WLAN part of the Centrino technology
become true. Though not yet officially announced
an Open-Source driver with included firmware
is available at SourceForge.
The driver is still experimental and supposed to work
with 2.4 Kernels as well as with 2.6 ones." (See these previous stories for some background.)
This really feels like Intel's finally feeling its stranglehold on the industry wavering a little (given AMD's 64bit success). I'd like to believe that this is going to lead them to start treating us like customers, rather than prisoners. Certainly, this is a nice first step.
Everybody, now this is your chance. Support Intel in their decision to open-source a driver, by buying their product. They are a rare breed.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
I'm impressed. A real open-source driver from a major company...this shames the NVidias and the Lucents of the world who give stupid excuses for their closed-source drivers.
Looks like I'm going to be sniffing around for a refurbed IBM T41 ThinkPad with Centrino tech in the future.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I fail to see how "Finally Intel has made their different announcements about Linux support for the WLAN part of the Centrino technology become true."
when the SourceForge web site clearly states in the first paragraph.
"This project was created to enable support for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 (IPW2100) mini PCI adapter. This project is intended to be a community effort as much as is possible given some working constraints (mainly, no HW documentation is available)"
Sounds like Intel haven't helped at all and some enterprising folks have done their own. Kudos to them, shame on Intel.
And shame on Werner and Timothy for getting basic cursory facts right. Unless of course the SF website is failing to give credit to Intel.
[)amien
Given the supposed lack of foresight in their hardware design that most wlan vendors have taken recently (using basically 'soft wlan' cards), it is probably more akin to a 'partially closed driver', in that you probably won't have access to the channel frequencies, adding new network modes (master, monitor, etc). HOWEVER given that, it should allow future patching to the kernel side of the driver to support whatever future interface changes happen to ensure the card won't suddenly become useless.
IMHO, this is what all wlan dealers should be doing... if you can't give direct access to the hardware due to possible legal/FCC constraints, then you should have firmware to handle the interfacing so that you can at least release firmware interface specs, and hopefully be able to cut down on cross development costs by having your firmware patches enhance both linux and windows functionality while stomping out mutual bugs.
They probably can't release the documentation for some reason, however as long as there are a number of intel people on the project _with_ access to the documentation this isn't as huge a problem as it would otherwise be.
This allows the community to help stear the portions of the code that don't require the documentation and to help them properly tie the driver into Linux.
As long as the code isn't a complete mess it will also be possible to get some understanding of the workings of the chip from the code.
I agree that it is not ideal, however it's better than a binary-only driver.
This is a great sign, if Intel starts supporting all of their products under Linux, other vendors will follow suit, and it won't be long before you'll see Lindows boxes alongside the Macs at CompUSA!
Yeah I know pretty soon we might get some linux support from other companies! Like NVidia, 3Comm, Ceative Labs, ATI, Netgear, Linksys, man pretty soon I'm gonna be able to build a sweet linux computer!
*Looks at his own two linux computers*
Oh...
I'd actually be more excited about Intel's decision if they had any products I actually wanted. I don't know of any companies I'd buy from whose products don't work in linux one way or another. Sure some things might not work, but I haven't run into anything in the past 2-3 years that I couldn't get working in linux although setting up my ATI card was a real pain. There are even a few no name devices that I wouldn't expect to work, that just happened to have support since they use the same chipset as like 40 other no name devies.
and that's why it hasn't been announced apart to a list mainly inhabited by developers
Okay, I'll retract the statement "Sounds like Intel haven't helped at all" although I did mention at the end of my statement it could be that the SF site wasn't crediting intel with any assistance.
Frankly I think the rest of my posting stands. While it's obvious some people have put hard work into this I don't think Intel have met the promises covered in the previous stories.
[)amien
Did you read past the first 3 lines on the website?
Go read the licenses: what company name do you read there?
On my screen FireFox renders seveal times the word "Intel"... but maybe It's just me.
They are releasing the specs and a semi-working beta to the community. Their developers AND the voluntary ones will improve the driver.
That's EXACTLY what linux users and developers have been asking for ages, i reckon.
It's a win-win situation: Intel gets a fully working and highly optimized driver for free and in a shorter time, and the community gets a GOOD driver for free.
Now tell us: what's wrong with Intel's approach, please.
Ciao, Renato
Judging by the scope of these variables and the fact that they seem to be docummented right at the top, I don't think anyone could have an issue with that.
In fact, sometimes explaining what a variable means and then using just a one letter name is much more helpful than names like "thisOneINeedToDoThisBecauseOfThat".
Just think of the use of "i" in for loops, no one in the right set of mind would use something like "loopCounter".
It's a bit like in PDE theory, if you use t, then you don't have to bother specifying that t belongs to [0,T] and that it's time - everyone expects that.
When I purchased my X31 from IBM a year ago, instead of going for a wireless option, I bought the machine "wireless rdy" and put in my own linux compatible prism2 minipci card, purchased off ebay. Because of this incident, I will certainly stay away from purchasing any item from intel where linux support is promised in the near future.
Hopefully companies like Intel will start to realize that Desktop Linux is here and people who are decision makers & influencer's in IT make up a significant portion of the desktop linux populous.
Just think of the use of "i" in for loops, no one in the right set of mind would use something like "loopCounter"
Quite, but if you're choosing decent variable names, you would never think of chooseing loopCounter!
What are you counting? That's what the variable name should be.
Iterating over rows in a matrix (or whatever)? then the variable name should be 'row'! Not rowCount or RowNumber or count or r, simply 'row'.
Then row++ makes sense - next row.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Not really. Most hardware nowadays contains firmware (modern wireless cards are often just ARM cores attached to a radio transmitter), but in many cases it's in ROM or flash and you've never noticed. Older wireless cards with entirely open drivers (such as the orinocos) had similar quantities of firmware, but the cards shipped with it in flash. Requiring it to be loaded by the OS makes hardware implementation slightly easier, and you can upgrade the firmware along with the drivers without involving potentially risky reflashing.
Would you consider Linux closed-source because on most hardware it requires a closed-source BIOS or firmware in order to boot?
(Yes, I know about LinuxBIOS. It supports a subset of x86 hardware)
This is utter nonsense. Prism54 is utilizing firmware as well, as do a bunch of other linux drivers. Every fricking wlan card out there has a firmware, it happens only that in the past most had the firmware flashed on the card / into the hardware, while nowadays the firmware is loaded by the driver into the card at runtime. Which is better, as upgrading the driver can (and will often) update the firmware too, without having to reflash first.
Somewhere you need to draw a line, and having firmware is nothing wrong but in fact often just necessary.
The problem I have with Centrinos WLAN is the fact that due to its embedded nature, I've yet to see any with antennas. I'd like to put a gain on my WiFi laptop around campus as the AP are far and wide. Why don't they make a standard jack for an antenna or something? It'd be quite useful other than being limited to "the AP inside the same room" sort of thing.
At least the firmware approach means that the drivers will work on non-x86 arches as well. I realize that video cards are whole nother kettle of fish but it would be nice if video cards just exposed a 3D api and all the interesting stuff happened on the card itself. It would be more optimal that what nvidia does now. Yeah it would be nice if the entire piece of hardware was open but least this approach lets us treat the hardware as a periphreal and not a black box that gets chucked into the kernel.
Quote from the first page at http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/:
This project was created by Intel to enable support for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 (IPW2100) mini PCI adapter. This project is intended to be a community effort as much as is possible given some working constraints (mainly, no HW documentation is available) (Emphasis mine)
So in Intel's own words, they did not release the specs, and I can't find anything on the site that says different...
Linux IT Consulting and Domino Development in Michigan
Wow now this is interesting. Intel have decided that they're going to call on the massive contingent of Open Source developers for their Linux driver. This benefits them because they don't have to hire programmers or support the drivers and can outsource it to the community at large who will maintain it. Under license, they still own the drivers, but the public who want the drivers are developing them effectively for Intel.
Has there been an instance of this before? OEMs don't usually endorse open source dev projects for their hardware, but if more OEMs did do this then we'd see a huge amount of support for devices that are currently not compatible with various operating systems, and an extended development life for drivers for aging hardware. Obviously this method applies to not only "classic" open source OS's such as Linux, but Windows as well. After all, the OEM isn't selling the drivers, it's selling the hardware and firmware.
I'd love to see more manufacturers posting the source to their drivers and the developer documentation to allow their drivers to be improved and worked on by the willing open source community at large, while the OEM maintains endorsement and ownership of the developed software. It seems to me this method harms nobody and benefits all.
WEP on an AP also makes it crystal clear that you're not expecting "visitors" so any legal proceedings later on are much more likely to bear fruit. Kind of hard for someone to say they just "stumbled" upon your network when the network is encrypted by default and requires effort to access...
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