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Centrino-based Linux Laptops
sebFlyte writes "Intel has lifted its ban on Linux-based laptops carrying its Centrino brand... It obviously makes very little difference technically what name is on the outside of the box, but does this represent a major philosophical shift for the chipmaker, or are they just leaping upon the nearest bandwagon in pursuit of a few extra bucks?"
Support for the wireless networking, the new a/b/g thing, is coming whithin 30 days. This is according to the news.com report here http://news.com.com/Intel+lets+Linux+into+Centrino +camp/2100-7344_3-5542514.html
A disgruntled economist
I hate to piggyback the FP with something that isn't exactly a reply but this is mu humble experience.
I work at a large corporation and we periodically bid our laptops in units of 5000. Centrino ultimately means nothing. It is just a standard for a "Pentium M with wireless + extra premium". What we have found is that it is much cheaper to just buy a "Pentium M with wireless - Centrino logo" for much less money. HP, Dell and IBM basically said that we could have the same PC with the Centrino sticker but it will cost us a lot more.
It is the same thing yet millions of people are eating it up and paying a lot more simply to have the Centrino sticker on their machine. Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large quanitites.
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You mean for the 2100 and 2200 chipsets?
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
HP has been selling the nx5000 with Suse Pro 9.1 preinstalled for months. Granted, they say the Intel Pro wireless isn't supported, but Intel has drivers for these cards at ipw2100.sf.net and ipw2200.sf.net. I believe the drivers are open source. So the only thing left is the multibay DVD+RW. But power management should work out of the box, I believe.
For some time now, linux drivers for the ipw2200 and older ipw2200 wlan chipsets have been usable. ipw2200 is now moving towards 1.0, beginning with a feature freeze.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
You should ask "Will we also see Sonoma based, Linux laptops?"
My guess would be "No, we won't." Centrino is now the old technology, isn't it?
Instead of guessing, why don't you read the article?
FTA:
"This time, Intel is moving faster. The company will support Sonoma's wireless networking with Linux within 30 days, Regis said. That support will cover both the dual-band Intel Pro/Wireless 2200 networking chip for 802.11b/g wireless networks and the tri-band Pro/Wireless 2915 chip for 802.11a/b/g networks."
The m6805 needs a bios update , go to www.notebookforums.com/org and follow the lead from there, theres also a Fedora developer who did a lot of work on the emachines to work under linux.
If you use Gentoo, when you boot type emachines as the kernel type and it'll detect everything for you.
I had a m6809 Gentoo was up and running from stage 2 in 5 hrs (X,fluxbox,firefox,thunderbird)..mucho faster than intel. I gave up the laptop because I needed a higher res screen and eMachines doesn't seem to be interested in catering to us.. I would've gladly paid a few hundred more but oh well.
You can buy new Mac's preconfigured to dual boot OSX and Yellow Dog Linux (RH based) from Terra Soft
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Airsnort and Kismet both depend on a function called "RFMON mode", or just monitor mode. It's characterized by the card not transmitting any data, but receiving all 802.11 frames that it can sense. Every frame is passed to userspace--the card has no association to any access point, it's just a radio receiver and frame interpreter.
Monitor mode allows apps like Kismet and Airsnort to work by making wireless traffic visible to userspace without having an association to an AP. For instance, how can you gather encrypted WEP traffic without already knowing the WEP key, unless you can listen and record the traffic without associating?
The Windows driver model doesn't provide monitor mode facilities, and it probably never will. That's why NDISWrapper won't work with Kismet or Airsnort--you're restricted to Windows driver functions, which precludes using monitor mode.
Virtually all 802.11 cards have the ability to function in such a mode, but not all Linux/OSS drivers support these abilities. The drivers that I know do support it include: hostap, prism54, madwifi--maybe more. Unfortunately for us Centrino people, neither the ipw2100 driver (The 802.11B-only device) nor its sister project, ipw2200 (802.11b/g) support monitor mode.
That's why I'm pulling my ipw2200 MiniPCI card and replacing it with an Aetheros (MADWifi) tri-band card.