The Battle for Wireless Network Drivers

An anonymous reader points out this Jem Matzan article "about the pain Linux and BSD programmers have in trying to obtain/write device drivers for various wireless cards," writing: This article also has a fairly detailed explanation of how wireless firmwares and drivers work. Two of the manufacturers are actively working with the FOSS community without requiring an NDA."

Comments

As someone that has been there

[mycal]

Trying to develop wireless 802.11 interfaces for embedded platforms I agree that it is a total pain in a arse. I even knew people that I worked with before at broadcom and couldn't get them to kick down the Software API. We finally got a Philips BGW200 system working and that wasn't easy either since even after filling out NDAs we got messed around for a few months trying to get the right documentation.

But now it does seem that Atmel is working with people, and accourding to the article so is raylink.

What you can do to help is if you have choice, support these guys when you have to buy a wireless adapter even if it is a few bucks more.

-M

Re:As someone that has been there

[DavidNWelton]

I set up a wiki a while ago in order to track hardware that does not work with Linux and that you should avoid:

http://www.leenooks.com/

It's going pretty well and seems to have become popular enough in its niche that it's not just me maintaining it, and it (almost) pays for the hosting, with adsense.

The companies

[Anonymous Coward]

The two companies are Ralink and Amtel.

Re:Of all the things

[infinityxi]

No, lack of drivers is a product of Microsoft's dominance. Vendors didn't inherently go with Microsoft because they were Microsoft (Before they started being used on every desktop). Microsoft is now the dominant OS therefore vendors will release drivers especially for windows. Ever look at an AMD chip in the plastic? It says Designed for XP, same for 90% of the graphics cards made for PCs today. I think that the only way to have a level playing field with the drivers are for the vendors to open the code of the driver (NOT the firmware as some douchebags will want you to think) and/or give out some clear or semi-clear documentation on how the computer should interact with the device. OpenBSD has made leaps and bounds on doing this and stay committed. In fact they have excellent wireless support, especially since they love to be technically correct with code/security etc. Open source operating systems lack the back door business deals that make this easier to accomplish but it is a hell of a lot better than it was back in 1999. Win-modems anyone?

The good list

[steveha]

According to the article, there are three companies that have actually worked with the free software community on drivers. Here is the list:

Ralink Technology

Atmel Corporation

Realtek Linux drivers here

Vote with your money, folks. If you would like to see companies cooperate with the free software community, reward the companies that do so by buying their products.

If you know of a particular piece of WiFi hardware that works particularly well in Linux or BSD, please follow up here so we all know what to buy. (See also this list.)

steveha