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Intel Releases Linux Driver For Centrino WLAN

Posted by timothy on from the usefulness dept.

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.)

12 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. From ipw2100_main.c by tcopeland · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Whew!
    if (!((r <= w && (e < r || e >= w)) || (e < r && e >= w))) {
    IPW2100_DEBUG_TX("exit - no processed packets ready to release.\n");
    return 0;
    }
    Fortunately there's a little ASCII art right above it that helps explain what that if condition does:
    /*
    * Quick graphic to help you visualize the following
    * if / else statement
    *
    * ===>| s---->|===============
    * e>|
    * | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l
    * r---->|
    * w
    *
    * w - updated by driver
    * r - updated by firmware
    * s - start of oldest BD entry (txq->oldest)
    * e - end of oldest BD entry
    *
    */
    --
    The Army reading list
  2. Open Source Driver + Firmware by alex_tibbles · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is this a full driver or is the firmware a subtle way of making a closed-source driver?

    (Honest question)

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    Posters recognized by their sig,
  3. Re:NDISWRAPPER by gspr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Do not encourage the use of NDISWRAPPER! Someone will probably moderate this as Troll, but come on - we all know that having such a "fallback option" makes the hardware makers relax more when it comes to releasing natively running, opensource Linux drivers!

  4. if only.... by thedude13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    broadcom would follow intel's lead and release a linux driver. while driverloader and ndiswrapper work, it would be nice to see the hardware vendor stop making crappy excuses (fcc regulations other stupid ones) about releasing a linux driver.

  5. I don't get it by edbarrett · · Score: 5, Interesting
    The contact email address is ipw2100adminlinuxintelco m, the readme says it's copyright intel, but the home page says
    This project is intended to be a community effort as much as is possible given some working constraints (mainly, no HW documentation is available)
    So intel is not releasing the necessary documentation for the hardware, but has set up a SF project for "The Open Source Community" to figure it out?
  6. Bzzt. Wrong. Look who's doing this. by petard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Read the copyright on the source code, and look at the contact info posted on the sf site. It's intel. (Hint: "Copyright 2003 - 2004 Intel Corporation" and the contact is jketreno AT linux.intel.com)

    Just because they aren't loudly tooting their own horn by splashing "intel" all over the sf.net website doesn't mean they're not helping/having their people do the work. What you saw simply means they haven't been able to work out how to get the HW docs out the door to the community, and are being candid about this in the first sentence of their page.

    And shame on you for making bad assumptions about helpful people, and unfairly criticizing an accurate news article.

    I suppose I may have been trolled here, and I hate to bite, but this needs to be corrected :-)

    --
    .sig: file not found
  7. Good news, but... by biendamon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...I'm curious why it took so long for this to finally happen. Intel knew, for a long time, that there was extensive interest.

    The Centrino is a good chipset, and Centrino-based laptops are fairly popular. Even without the wireless support, I've been happy using a Linux-based Centrino laptop for the last six months. The lack of wireless access was the one thing that had been sticking in my craw.

    Now, I'll be able to unequivocally recommend these laptops to friends who use Linux. This will mean more sales for Intel. This, I would think, would be considered a Good Thing (tm). So why the wait?

  8. Re:NDISWRAPPER by Zakabog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But for them to relax more they'd have to be working on something in the first place, most of the hardware makers that are willing to support linux are gonna do it with the best drivers they can, not have people running their software in linux with some little hack. And the ones that don't support linux don't care that some little app lets people run windows drivers, they weren't going to support linux anyway it's not worth it for them. If NDISWRAPPER works then people should use it, I know I'd deffinitely use it if it supports my laptops network card (haven't been able to get this thing to work at all, some fairly old lucent technologies wireless card, I think there is support for some newer version of this card but not mine.) I'd use a newer card with linux support but the laptop itself doesn't support these (dunno why, tried some netgear card it didn't like that very much I think the PCMCIA slot in my laptop is 16 bit or something like that it's an old laptop.)

  9. Re:Thanks, Intel... by dave420 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Stupid excuses like "this cost us millions to produce, so we're not going to give the code away to you and our competitors, which would eventually cause us to lose so much revenue we'd not be able to make any more cards/drivers for you at all"?

  10. Re:Thanks, Intel... by Tore+S+B · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...this shames the NVidias and ...

    Well, nVidia has a good reason - they use proprietary algorithms lisenced from companies who makes them for a living. Their lisence disallows them from releasing the source. Thus, it is not a stupid excuse. Their hands are really tied. Intel also had some completely valid concerns that an Open-Source driver would allow their chip to tune to frequencies out of the legal WLAN band, and at signal strengths way higher than the legal limit, to name a few.

    Luckily, Intel (justly IMO) judged that the competitive advantages of Linux support outweighed those risks.

    -tsb

    --
    toresbe
  11. *BSD Driver? by nurb432 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Thats really nice the released for linux, but how about us FBSD folks.. or are we out of luck on this one...

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  12. Re:Intel Feeling the Pressure? by Oriumpor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is no first step, it's the begining of the end of many steps Intel has taken forth with it's centrino *line.* The only remaining piece was the WLAN component they have already facilitated the release of the speed stepping and other integrated components.

    Wintel isn't ALWAYS the badguy.

    NOW, I can say THANK GOODNESS no more lockups in Fedora from DriverLoader BS, now my only question is how will they allow Linux users to flash their firmware when the manufacturers don't provide floppy drives on most of the Centrino lines.