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.)

Comments

Intel Feeling the Pressure?

[CrankyFool]

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.

Thanks, Intel...

[MsGeek]

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.

Open Source Driver + Firmware

[alex_tibbles]

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

(Honest question)

Re:Open Source Driver + Firmware

[vranash]

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.

Re:Open Source Driver + Firmware

[alex_tibbles]

to answer my own question (partly):
"As the firmware is licensed under a restricted use license, it can not be included within the kernel sources. To enable the IPW2100 you will need a firmware image to load into the wireless NIC's processors." From http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/README.ipw2100.
And look at the firmware license!

No WEP

[gspr]

WEP currently no support
Notice how WEP support is not yet done.

Hardly Intel...

[damieng]

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.

Re:Hardly Intel...

[javatips]

My first reaction was the same as yours... But if you browse at the end of the page and hover your mouse on the maintainer name, you'll see that he has an Intel e-mail address.

So yes Intel is, kind of, supporting Linux driver for the Centrino chip as the pay the guy...

However, I don't beleive this is a priority for them. If it was so, they would have released something that is fully functional... What it seems to me is that they are paying one guy to do it and hope the OS community will jump in and help them out! I don't see any real corporate backing behind this project.

I don't get it

[edbarrett]

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?

Re:I don't get it

[MWelchUK]

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.

Bzzt. Wrong. Look who's doing this.

[petard]

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 :-)

Re:From ipw2100_main.c

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh!
This is high performance code! Single-letter variable names execute more faster.
U R teh st00p3d.