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The Problem With Driver-Loaded Firmware
Kadin2048 writes "If you've gone to a big-box store and purchased a wireless card recently, you might have had some trouble getting it to work under Linux, or any non-Windows OS for that matter. One reason for this is that more and more manufacturers are producing hardware that are useless without proprietary firmware. While these new designs allow for lower parts counts and thus lower cost, it presents a serious problem for F/OSS software because it can sometimes guarantee no out-of-the-box compatibility. Jem Matzan has produced a detailed article, "The battle for wireless network drivers," on the subject, including interviews with manufacturers' representatives and OS developers, including Theo de Raadt. The bottom line? In general, Asian hardware manufacturers were far more responsive and liberal about firmware than U.S. manufacturers (Intel included). Look for more firmware issues in the future, as not only wireless hardware, but regular wired Ethernet cards, take the driver-loaded firmware approach."
Wouldn't the creation of free firmware be a better (and maybe more generic?) solution? Isn't it a case of relatively few WiFi chipsets being used with multiple drivers where each vendor uses it's own firmware?
This will not offer a solution if all/most firmware is written by the chipset manufacturers though....
I have always wondered if part of the reason this sort of thing is so popular might be because it curries favor with MS. I'm certain MS is NOT displeased with this sort of thing. Can we say "winmodem"?
It's the Return of the WinModem!
Proud member of the American Non Sequitur Society. We might not make much sense, but boy do we love pizza!
Oh yeah, I remember the good old days when I could pick up a USB drive and be able to plug it in and simply move files back and forth as it was intended. Simple. Bought a USB drive from Best Buy and it was garbage. It wanted to - for my convenience - load crap software on my computer and generally was a pain in the ass trying to use it for what I wanted. Next USB flash drive I bought I had to sit there for twenty minutes to find one, more expensive, that would allow me to use it without having all that crap software/spyware on it. Definitely not an improvement.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
I recently purchased a Dynex DX-WGDTC PCI card from Best Buy for 35 bucks, the chipset had some sort of aluminum heat sink over it. I took a gamble and bought it anyway with a feeling that it was manufactured by D-Link. Turns out I was right, it has an Atheros 5212 chipset and I was ecstatic. The madwifi drivers work spectacular with this card. A patched madwifi-ng driver will allow you to crack WEP using ARP injection *wink* I recommend you go out and buy one immediately.
I've asked a thousand times and never had answered very well:
List wireless cards, vendors, and prices that I can obtain today, which do work with Linux.
The compatability lists on the linux wireless sites are useless -- sure there are lots of cards that work, but many of them
have been discontinued for years, some were only available in certain locales, and some, if you found the model, have had their
chipsets changes.
I know of no resource that would allow me to successfully pursue wither of the following use cases:
1. I want to purchase an 802.11g device guaranteed by the vendor to work with some version of Linux.
2. I want to make a purchase order for a wireless device by vendor and part number, for a corpoarte deployment.
I consider my wireless cards to be rare and treasured artifacts. I didn't upgrade my notebook because I knew I was extremely
lucky to get a laptop with a built-in Prysm2. The situation *sucks* far worse than the winmodem situation ever did.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Look for more firmware issues in the future, as not only wireless hardware, but regular wired Ethernet cards, take the driver-loaded firmware approach.
If you think problems with those are bad, you should see the "license" problems with a lot of bluetooth devices.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Correct me if I'm wrong -- the problem is that the firmware doesn't come preloaded on the hardware. So basically you have a hardware platform with no driving software -- essentially one big, blank programmable ASIC with specialty hardware depending on what the card is.
One of the major complaints seems to be that the loadable firmware is not redistributable, and anyway it's full of bugs and other crazy stuff. It occurs to me that maybe these cards are like CPU platforms -- lots of hardware, no driving software. For one particular piece of hardware -- Intel CPU's -- some bright guy named Linus wrote some "firmware" to make that platform run.
So couldn't some bright people get together, use the programmable hardware as a starting point, and develop their own firmware? I guess you wouldn't have to develop firmware for every blank hardware platform that was manufactured. Just the ones with the neatest hardware features.
--Rob
Towards the Singularity.
This is the same thing that happened years ago with modems. For desktop computers it's not that big of a problem because it's still cheap and easy to get cards that work, although kind of a bummer if you can't use something you've already bought. The times when it's a real problem though is with a laptop, if you've bought a laptop and the onboard networking or wireless is like this you're usually just fucked if you want to run linux, you'll have to buy another external interface for USB or Cardbus or whatever -- a real pain with a laptop.
Simple. Start a Free Hardware Foundation.
Now don't say it's not possible, since there's really difference in producing SW or HW for free from the economical point of view.
If you think there is, you are wrong.
In general, Asian hardware manufacturers were far more responsive and liberal about firmware than U.S. manufacturers (Intel included). Look for more firmware issues in the future, as not only wireless hardware, but regular wired Ethernet cards, take the driver-loaded firmware approach.
Let's take this from a slightly different perspective:
In general American hardware manufacturers were far more pigheaded and close-mouthed about firmware than Asian manufacturers (Intel especially.) Look for more firmware issues in the future, as Asian corporations continue to take over the remnants of the U.S. manufacturing sector, with U.S. companies stubbornly trying to hang on to their "intellectual property".
Maybe if these idiots stopped listening their legal teams (and Microsoft!) so much, started worrying less about developers using their oh-so-precious "intellectual property" to make their own products useful to even more customers we wouldn't be in this fix. American tech companies are shooting themselves in the foot, having forgotten that continuous innovation and fresh ideas, not hordes of attorneys, are what drive a tech sector to competitiveness. Meanwhile, China is walking off with the the entire candy store.
There are only two ways to beat your competition in the modern world: out-lawyer them or out-think them. We used to be in the latter camp (Yankee ingenuity, and all that) but not any more.
Rather depressing, really.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
The only real issue here is vendors who try to restrict distribution of the firmware with open drivers. Otherwise, this is how it has always been, except instead of firmware being loaded from a flash chip, it's loaded from the disk drive by the driver. This is by far the more sensible way to handle it, and removes a redundant component from hardware.
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.)
Firmware is often large. Think "megabyte".
For an OS to drive the hardware, it has to include the firmware. That's no serious problem for driving a few devices after you've installed the OS.
Problem is, the OS doesn't just support YOUR devices. It has to support ALL devices, with ALL hardware revisions and board layouts. So, how many devices could exist...?
Now you're talking about real disk space. This could get into the gigabytes.
What about at install time? It's all going to have to fit.
Basically everything powered by ZyDas and RaLink-Chipsets works flawlessly with GNU/Linux and the Free/OpenBSD. You can grab those off of EBay dirt cheap in large quantities, mostly from Power Sellers/commercial shops. Big-brand vendors with "the good stuff" on their boards I've personally seen yet were GigaByte (for MiniPCI), ASUS (PCI), and a crapload of others with ZyDas and Prism (for USB - including, for instance, NetGear).
There's also an emerging (well, maybe they exist for ages, but I've not known the company up until recently) manufacturer for networking gear called "TP-LINK" which sells virtually everything from RaLink. I happen to have a "TP-LINK TL-WN321G" (usb2 full speed) adapter which features a RaLink chip supported by the rt73-usb driver just perfectly. Cost me 9 Euro in germany.
Hth.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
These articles are always frustrating to me, because I can read about chipsets that work, but not about which cards support them. It's hard to go to newegg and buy a card, because many of the cards that have the good chipsets come in different versions with bad chipsets.
My ancient orinoco silver pcmcia card stopped working with ubuntu as of edgy. I don't know why. It works with other distros. But it's not 802.11g, and it doesn't do WPA, and although it's not important to me, it's not great for scanning.
So I want to buy a card. I'd order one today, but I don't know what to get.
I know our buying power as a community is small, but I'd think that some no-name card manufacturer would find it worthwhile to make a card that has a picture of a penguin on it, and that is fully supported by free software. I'd pay a little more for a card that I know will just work, and that will continue to work.
Is that it leads to dupes.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Remember winmodems? LOL. There's really no excuse for this.
I hate sigs.
Building a standards compliant intelligent machine is often more expensive than building an ad hoc machine, if for no other reason than the cheapest parts can always be used, and there is no need to support all users. The flip side is that a specific driver must be created for each device.
I had an incident that nicely illustrated this point. I bought a very cheap digital camera a few couple years ago. Now, any standard camera with a USB port should work with my Mac with no additional drivers. Perhaps not all the bells and whistles, but the PTP should work. As it turned out, this camera was not standards based, and, even worse, had undergone a revision so, even thought the model number was the same, it did not work with the drivers I did have. There only way to determine that this camera was not in fact the same camera was to open the hermetically sealed bomb proof packaging, open the camera, and use a magnifying glass to inspect the product code.
Which just shows that if one wants the cheapest products, then MS Windows is the way to go. Manufacturers can design to the platform, write a few drivers, and sell to the masses. So the point of *nix, and perhaps the Mac,is not to provide the cheapest product, but instead long term stability. I have every reason to believe that Canon camera will work with my computer for a long time, because I am not going to lose connectivity when the next OS upgrade comes around. The standards will still be supported. I have SCSI devices from the OS 9 days that still work perfectly with OS X. I have no idea if those same devices, which required a special driver for MS Window, have continued support for current MS products.
So really all that can be said is don't buy the cheap products. If one has a choice between the standard printer and generic printer, pay the extra money for the generic printer. Support the standards that will allow *nix to prosper.
To specifically address the wireless thing, the standard is certainly in flux, and no one can be expected to support a standard that does not necessarily exist. That said, it should still be possible to assemble a standard compliant box that is not targeted towards the MS Windows OS, perhaps at additional costs.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
How is this really news? This problem has been known about for years... Winmodems, anyone?
I don't know if this article is a dupe, but the problem is.
If you don't remember the WinModem problem, this might seem absurd. This has been a problem for a long time. It never really went away. People just started using networks connected to telephone supplied DSL modems, cable modems, or cheap external USB modems, and forgot about the problem.
Madwifi drivers are not free, as they require a binary-only, proprietary Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL, not to be confused with freedesktop.org HAL/hald) running, which is in fact even worse than platform-agnostic firmware which is just shoved over the bus to the device and running on an ASIC there. The HAL needs to be present and compiled for every Platform you're going to run the Atheros-powered card on.
The OpenBSD-folks have developed a free as in speech replacement for the binary-only HAL provided by Atheros, but madwifi did not care to adopt it at all - which leaves their true intentions somewhat dubious to me (and a few concerned others).
Bottom line is: I would not buy Atheros-based cards, and rather go for RaLink or ZyDas. Though watch out, as the latter company recently has been bought by Atheros, therefore suggesting that either their future devices will come with equally dumb restrictions/dependencies applied on their drivers, or their excellent product line vanish completely.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Also, people seem to be forgetting that the "miniscule marketshare" of Linux equates to millions of users, so you question should really be: "Why should they expend a minimal amount of time and effort in order to attract the custom of millions of potential customers and the subsequent recommendations from those that the less tech-savvy hold in high esteem?", which should be pretty much a no-brainer
Despite what the fine article seems to lead the reader to understand, the ar5k open "HAL" is not functionally equivalent to the Atheros/Sam Leffler HAL. The proprietary HAL has support for multiple VAP structures (IE, you can have the same card be an AP, and a station, and a monitor all at the same time.) The proprietary HAL also supports more chipsets and more of the cool features like XR, and quarter and half bandwidth channels. There are some internal political reasons that Madwifi uses the Atheros HAL, and I don't expect or desire it to change soon.
I bought a Compaq Presario V2000Z laptop. As I found out the hard way, this laptop has a whitelist of wifi cards that it will boot up with in the BIOS. Before I found out about the lock, I spent 20USD on a Ralink based card. But before I actually bought the card, I asked an HP tech if there is such a lock, I received a negative answer. Sometimes, you can't vote with your money, even if you want to.
I have read that it is possible to edit the BIOS (decompress, edit the proper bytes in proper places, compress back and flash), the problem arises with flashing, it just doesn't want to do it. A work around I found is if I keep the system in the grub menu and switch out the card, I can still use the card in Linux, the problem is that this is a workaround and not a real solution.
Looks like RaLink might be the only player on the block soon enough...
Listen to my music.
Here are a few currently running (UK) eBay auctions that have known-working-under-Linux cards (all are ralink, and I own one of each of these devices, unless some kind of version-bump has changed the chipset!) :
USB
PCI
PCMCIA
All should Just Work on, say, Ubuntu Dapper onwards (they did for me, at least), but I should note that I have not tried WPA with them. Obviously, eBay auctions are not exactly appropriate for corporate acquisitions, but hopefully this will help you in your search!
The odds are extremely good that you have a RealTek NIC on your machine if it's an integrated part.
There's several reasons for this.
It's cheap.
It works VERY well, though not the best that money can buy.
It's completely open in it's documentation and relatively easy to design with.
Those three things make me think of using their part first- especially the open information part.
It's no different for any other engineer. I can assure you, they're about to get a batch of people
on the scene that are customers that will insist on this stuff being the case. Customers that are
are going to be big enough to not ignore and won't take "NO" for an answer as they'll find someone
else if they get it.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Why don't we learn from our mistakes? Other than cost, what's the benefit of this? None that I can think of.
You must be from soviet russia
Different creatures, these and winmodems. These are drivers that load firmware to chips on the cards that actually *do* something. A winmodem was really just a lousy sound card integrated with a DAA and thus could be plugged into a phone line. Nearly *all* of the signal processing was done by the host processor. No firmware was downloaded to winmodems, because nothing (or very little) was being done on the card itself.
With these, the cards actually still do processing for themselves, but the manufacturer decided to spare themselves the cost of the EEPROM/flash to store the firmware image, so they make the host download it to them.
Either solution is craptastic if you ask me, but winmodems were a different critter. At least with a winmodem, it would be possible to write your own drivers (in theory), since all you need is a good solid background in signal processing theory, some reasonably cool telco test gear, and all of the modem modulation specs. The hardware was relatively simple to figure out. With these, the hardware is a black box, likely riddled with bugs and gotchas, that would be almost impossible to reverse engineer without spending a good deal of time/money (possibly down to reverse-engineering the silicon itself).
Not only that, I have written OS/2 and FreeBSD drivers for it outside of work hours (but with permission).
There is ABSOLUTELY NO REASON why a FOSS driver cannot install the firmware. This is NOT the problem. There MAY be a problem with distribution rights, or with documenting how to load the firmware, but these are NOT what TFA described.
While one might like to have the spec for writing one's own GPL firmware, and I dont see prob;lems with that, I do see a problem with expecting $100,000 worth of firmware development for free, when the hardware can be replicat4ed for a $10, and the combination normally sells for $100. Ie there are products on the market where the majority of the value is in the firmware. and Yes, it does sometimes take more than three man-years of $100/day consultants to write firmware for a product with a predicted lifetime of 8-months. (Graphics card, anyone?)
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
I'm actually in the market for a wireless card for a desktop PC running Ubuntu Edgy right about now, actually.
Any clear winners? Does it matter which router I will be using? For that matter, I need to get a router as well.
(I figure I might as well ask here, since the topic is here. I would otherwise have just gone to the Ubuntu forum.)
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The Amiga used to use drivers on the ROMs of a Zorro II/III cards all of the time. It was proprietary card slot design so since it would only work on AmigaOS 2+ it wasn't a problem. Treating Windows the same way with a PCI slot should be a problem since PCI slots aren't Windows or even an x86-specific specification. (Does anybody remember the PowerPC Common Hardware Reference Platform specification? PCI was in there.)
Virtual machines are becoming more and more common. One approach is to think of Windows as part of your machine's firmware, and run your real operating system in a VM.
Trying to get an exhaustive list of all WLAN adapters supported under Linux is the wrong way to approach the pb because there are literally hundreds of them on the market. However they are all based on only a dozen or so of common WLAN chipsets: Zydas ZD12xx, Atheros, Intel PRO/Wireless 2xxx, etc. It's easier to assemble a list of supported chipsets rather than a list of supported adapters.
Firstly, you can have a look at the drivers/net/wireless directory of the kernel source code. From there look at the Kconfig file (compilation options) where every WLAN chipset natively supported by the kernel is succinctly described, and pointers to additional details about the drivers are often provided: READMEs, URLs...
Secondly, some WLAN chipsets are not natively supported by the kernel, but instead by third party drivers from independent open-source projects (most of them will be integrated into the kernel in the near future). So check out this webpage for example (the interesting section is "The devices, the drivers - 802.11+, 802.11a, 802.11g"), it has been written by Jean Tourrilhes who got involved as a developer with early work on the Wireless framework in Linux. He wrote this page specifically to gather info about all the existing WLAN drivers in a central place. It contains info about third party drivers as well as drivers natively supported by the kernel. The page is slightly outdated though, so check out this wikipedia article about open source wireless drivers for a complement.
Thirdly, other WLAN chipsets are supported by proprietary drivers only, I recommend you stay away from them.
At this point, personally, I like to take decisions about hardware purchases "from the bottom up". In other words, I decide which one of the WLAN chipsets I would like my adapter to be based on (since it determines the major features of the device), and then I search for adapters using it. Usually the website of the driver maintainer, or the mailing list of the driver project, or the driver documentation are good places to look for list of adapters based on particular chipsets.
Hardware makers have done a huge disservice to their customers by not producing stable chipsets. They'll have several revisions of say the "Linksys USB11" and each one using a different chipset. You go to Amazon and buy it and yet have no idea which version you'll be getting. To be fair there have been some new standards like WPA etc that possibly would have required a new chipset, but the vendors just went way overboard in their lack of regard for stability in their product lines.
I must have half a dozen wirless nics from PC Cards, to PCI cards, to USB versions and I think one of them is detected automatically without major problems in linux. And of course the one that is detected won't do WPA in linux so it is 100% worthless. Good thing I don't use Linux as my main desktop OS anymore. While things have gotten better, support for hardware on linux still sucks just as bad now as it did many years ago.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Original comment from five days ago
Parent is stealing comments to salvage his poor karma. Notice his extensive "Score: 0" comment history.
The problem with this approach is that if you go to most retailers' websites you can not find what chipsets their cards use. I have gone to Amazon.com looking for Ralink and I get only one or two hits, none of which are usb wireless or pcmcia wireless cards. So, yeah, it would be nice to know which brands have which chipsets. It really is confusing.
I have a Meade DSI astronomical CCD. I bought it in 2005, it a USB device with an uploaded firmware. I was simple to figure out how to upload the firmware to use the camera from Linux, but the CMYK de-bayer matrix is causing me grief. I can decode an "image" but it isn't pretty.
that is exactly what MS wants - make sure NO computer can run without having some windows installed.
Would your real name happen to be Ballmer?
Quick clarification, seeing some of the posts here about "winmodems" and junkware-infested drivers:
Drivers run on your computer and let it talk to the device.
Firmware is "software" that runs on the device - typically code for on-board microcontrollers, Field Programmamble Gate Arrays (FPGA) and other "soft hardware".
There is nothing wrong with the idea of using driver-loaded firmware - it simplifies the device (no need for on-board flash memory) and makes it easier to fix "hardware" issues with an updated driver (with less risk of "bricking" a device by muffing a firmware update). Linux can actually cope with it quite happily - A lot of digital TV cards rely on driver-loaded firmware and its all fine and dandy provided that either (a) the manufacturer offers a download of the firmware or (b) it can be extracted from the windows driver CD or (c) some evil pirate has selfishly conspired to increase the manufacturer's customer base by posting an iffy copy.
There is an interesting question as to the status of such a "firmware blob" vis. the GPL (especialy the anti-TiVOization clauses of V3). Is it part of the software (thus tainting the free-ness of any drivers that require it) or part of the hardware (FPGA "software" is more like a circuit diagram than a program - and the "source code" might be useless without proprietary software from the FPGA manufacturer - and tweaking it might void the FCC/CE certification of the device)?
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Also, anything with an Atheros chipset also works very well with the MadWifi drivers.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I'm all for letting cooperative organizations know why I'm purchasing their equipment and not their uncooperative competitors (and notifying their uncooperative competitors to the contrary), but I don't expect it to mean that I'm in any way "voting" or leveraging some kind of democratic control over what is essentially a private tyranny.
However, if you read Theo de Raadt's informative talk slides, you'd see another reason why "voting" with your money isn't what it is made out to be (slides 24 and 25—"The OEM problem"). Maybe if customers in the US were organized to a scale never before seen and all demanding chips with complete and unrestricted documentation, we'd have more control as a group. This is worth pursuing, and if you are calling for this I would gladly join such an effort.
I say this is another reason because the general problem with the concept of voting by spending money means that rich people have more "votes" than poor people, so this saying tries to cast a egalitarian pall on an inequity. de Raadt addresses how much consumer power you have with regard to computer hardware by pointing out how OEMs leverage competition to insulate themselves from customer's wishes for chips we can operate without proprietary software. I mentioned this before but I didn't think it would come up as a repeat so soon.
Digital Citizen
enjoy
Edimax uses ralink and are a reasonable price.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Maybe the ASUS WL-107g CardBus card will work for your needs. Newegg carries it for about $30 or so. I got one of these running on gNewSense GNU/Linux, a GNU/Linux distribution that places software freedom as a higher priority than trying to work with every device out there (and the concomitant need for distributing non-free software). To this end, they strip out non-free firmware and non-free drivers from their distribution. So, I can try running any device with that OS and know that if it works there it ought to work anywhere in freedom.
I've heard the D-Link DWL G122 USB wireless network adapter works with free software drivers and without any firmware, but I don't have one of them to test first hand.
I agree with you that we need an actively maintained list of makes and models of things to buy, not just chipset lists. Makes and models are what people can ask for by name in stores.
Digital Citizen
So long as the manufacturer distributes firmware freely (and they generally do, so they can distribute new firmware versions), it's no problem for drivers regardless of OS to load that firmware onto the device. It's generally about the easiest device function to implement. Linux has a standard mechanism for the kernel to get the firmware from userspace.
It's a bit of a pain if the manufacturer doesn't allow redistribution of the firmware, because it means your brand-new wireless card doesn't work until you've got network to download the firmware, but that's a relatively minor issue (and they generally have a CD containing the correct file if you buy a card).
It's a lot more of an issue that manufacturers don't document how to use the device at a hardware level in general, and card manufacturers often give completely unrelated hardware exactly the same name. So it's hard to tell what driver to use, and whether there is a driver for the device. Then there's the issue that most internal modems these days are actually sound cards with phone-line I/O, and the OS is supposed to play the right sound onto the phone line. (Which is lame, but things are coming along for handling it.)
But the need to send a file you can get to the device before it will do stuff isn't really a big deal. I'm actually posting this with a Wifi chipset (ipw3945) that requires firmware, which was automatically handled by Linux (Gentoo), and the firmware is completely independant of operating system, processor architecture, or really anything outside the device.
The article is pretty clearly saying that the problem isn't that firmware makers aren't releasing source code to expensively developed firmware (though obviously that would solve the problem). The problem is that many chipset makers aren't providing rights to freely re-distribute firmware, and aren't providing documentation for that firmware so drivers can be written.
AccountKiller
This is not a bad thing
Lets say for instance you are BroadCom. You create a NIC or LOM chip set, lets say all the firmware is built in. Later you discover a bug, not super critical, but its enough of a PITA to cause you support problems, well then what? You now have several million cards or chipsets out there that need fixing. BIOS flash? PROM patch? Most all of those need to be applied with nothing happening on the card and bare bones system running, ie: A Bootable diskette ( when is the last time you saw a floppy drive in a machine if you did not specificaly order it ), or a bootable CD image. Now basic CD-ROM burners are pretty much on every new machine, but that leads to lots more complications, now they have to distribute something that will boot ( Free-DOS, Micro Linux Kernel, whatever ) and then that CD has to be burned. Again this is a PITA for the end user.
So without going through comparisons to WinModems, this is a good idea. Download the update, on windows install and re-boot, on Linux, Netware or another *nix just re-start the ethernet system, and bug fix applied, life is good.
BroadCom does in fact provide Windows, Linux, Netware, FreeBSD, Solaris. DOS, OS/2 and SCO drivers for:
As for the other mentioned, a quick look at the Intel web site shows me tons of drivers for Linux, FreeBSD, etc. etc. So I fail to see what everyone is bitching about. I have loaded several Distro's on various hardware and it just works. Performance is more then satisfactory.
Case in point. I have a old IBM thinkpad A-21M. I loaded NLED 9.x on it and the only thing that was a problem was the built in ATI video system. One call to the Novell's FREE support line and it was fixed in under 30 seconds. I stuffed a Netgear wireless card in it ( WG511T to be exact ), and it booted and ran perfectly.
Now all of that being said, I do understand some peoples desire to have Open Source drivers for these cards. There are lots of really good open source programmers out there that arguably could construct a better driver then the manufacturer, but I am thinking people with those kind of chops are fairly rare ( how many Linus's are there?? ) and they have lots bigger fish to fry.
I have yet to see a NIC or wireless chipset that there was just ZERO Linux support for. Would life be better and easier if support for EVERY OS out there was just perfect, well yes it would. Is that an economic reality? Not by any means. If it were the case BroadCom and Intel would be providing drivers for BeOS ( which I personaly love ), Amiga, DR-DOS, MS-DOS, PC-DOS etc., for their latest and greatest tech, but they don't because it takes 1000's of man hours ( read BIG dollars ) to do so and the last time I checked these companies were not charitiable organizations.
Now to the point of them providing the specifications for their products. Yes life would be nice if every interface was published and nicely documented and I really have no idea WHY they are being cluby about this. it would be totaly in their benefit to do so, for the following reasons:
All in all, I see providing detailed interface specifications to their hardware as being a total upside for them and I don't see a downside.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
>> I've asked a thousand times and never had answered very well: [where is a list of] wireless cards, vendors, and prices that I can obtain today, which do work with Linux.
> [Detailed list of some compatible cards, and some general guidelines]
But this is exactly the problem! When people ask this question, they get details, and perhaps a link to a list or two. But there is no single up-to-date reliable hardware list that a Linux-user can really rely on. This should be a simple URL of a website that answers all hardware questions: enter a chipset or a product name, and get a list of distros on which it works. Sounds obvious, and necessary, but we still don't have it. Even such a website for a specific distro doesn't exist, to my knowledge - for example the Ubuntu wiki has lists of compatible hardware, but it isn't very convenient or accessible, I've spent a lot of wasted time on it. Also, if a particular model isn't listed, I don't know if that means it wasn't tested, or doesn't work (although some models are marked as not working). And the basic problem is that the Ubuntu wiki could be wrong - I am not aware of anyone doing serious quality control there.
I guess for most people knowledgeable about Linux, this isn't a big issue - they know the answers or know where to get them. Still, a better solution would make things more convenient for them. And newcomers would certainly be much happier.
From http://www.theory.physics.ubc.ca/transit.html:
This card [M-Audio Transit] needs to have firmware downloaded to the card on the USB bus to work. It uses a non-standard "DFU" method which seems to have some problems with Linux. It also mixes its Type I and Type III endpoints to confuse the software. I have found (with the help of and software written by Clement Ladisch and Takashi Iwai.) a way to make this card useable.The card requires firmware to be downloaded to the card first for it to work as a soundcard. While it appears on the usb bus with Vendor/ProductID of 0763/2806 this is a very primative usb device that does nothing except wait for firmware.
A firmware loader for M-Audio audio devices is available at http://usb-midi-fw.sourceforge.net/. Interestingly enough, the set-up procedure involves copying the firmware bin file from the Windows driver installation, which is subsequently used by the firmware loader.
Anyways, TFA makes some interesting points:
Unrestricted redistribution of firmware files is satisfactory for some open source operating system projects like OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and many varieties of GNU/Linux, but others like Fedora Core and Debian demand an entirely free software environment, so redistribution of the firmware without the ability to modify and distribute the source code is prohibited.The firmware, although its being loaded to the device, is still firmware. Do distributions that demand an entirely free sofware environment ship drivers for devices with proprietary firmware? Of course they do. I'm not convinced that this should be any different.
I think that Theo de Raadt, of OpenBSD, has it right:
So instead of lobbying for documentation to write open source firmware, de Raadt would prefer to simply have the right to freely distribute necessary proprietary firmware files with his operating system, along with correct firmware interface documentation so that a driver can be created, and information from the manufacturer regarding bug workarounds.-azzurro
The parent makes a distinction that's VERY important to understand to know what's going on here.
The only thing I disagree with is the method of distribution of firmware (and is one of the central complaints of the article). Unless distributions have the ability to freely re-distribute firmware, they're sunk. It's just simply too difficult or too much a pain-in-the-ass for end users to go find firmware from a windows CD, a manufacturer, etc. I'm no stranger to Linux and have been using it for 10+ years now all the way from user to administrator to programmer, and even _I_ hate that kind of nonsense. I'd rather just have the damn thing work and not have to screw around with it.
AccountKiller
>Trying to get an exhaustive list of all WLAN adapters supported under Linux is the wrong way to approach
I didn't ask for an exhaustive list, or any list really. I asked for a vendor and part number to order. Just one, with assurance from the vendor that the device works, it's fine if the stipulate Red Hat Enterprise Linux or whatever.
Who can I call, make a purchase order, and obtain wireless cards for deployment on linux? Trial and error doesn't work in that environment.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
US and European history is littered with lawsuits over patent infringment. Patent suits go back to the creation of patents. Because in quite a few cases a patent owner has been defrauded of their creation because the law and the courts have not been enough to protect their property they've taken a path of protecting their property with obscurity.
You could work with the http://www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio/ and come up with a generic framework that could run most any kind of dsp related tranceiver be it wireless or wired.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
>Edimax uses ralink and are a reasonable price.
Name, number, URL of a US vendor selling "Edimax?" Do they actually assert compatability, or is this another situation where the units on one order are compatabile, and the next ones are not?
The Edimax website does specify linux driver compatability (unprecedented as far as I know!), but does not offer a locator for retail outlets, nor do they offer a way to order.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>all are ralink, and I own one of each of these devices, unless some kind of version-bump has changed the chipset
That is exactly the problem. Our organization has found compatable devices in the past, only to reorder by exact model number to receive incompatable units. It has happened twice with two manufacturers, and it contributed to linux being abandoned for a project.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
What, we must install an OS from Blu-ray or HD-DVD now?
FYI, a cheap and semi-compatible (single-layer, single-side) DVD is something like 2 to 5 GB depending on type.
Normal OS installs are meant to work from CD media, which is about 700 MB. Often, the install is meant to run from a ramdisk.
Storage space isn't the only problem here. Reading all that data takes time.
Even if I do have well over 100 GB of drive space, I'd rather not devote a few percent of that to firmware for devices I don't even own. In other words, these manufacturers are collectively stealing a few percent of my disk space.
The only way companies that hold things so close to the chest can be influenced is by hurting their cash flow. This is capitalism in action. If they realize they are pissing people off with their attitude, and it is costing them money, then they will change. Until then, you can howl at the moon until the cows come home and they won't stop actively shutting out open source developers.
I would suggest that it might be an option to use the collective IT experience and position of Slashdotters to effect a boycot of firmware products from companies that only cooperate with MS based products. Or any hardware manufacturer that does this. If you have input to your company purchasing 5 or 5 million wireless cards (in this example) and TI or Intel is one option versus Realtek or Ralink or Zdas on the other... ***and they all do the job you require*** (regardless of whether you are installing them on an MS box, an Open Source box, or other) use your influence to buy from the group containing Realtek or Ralink or Zdas, or other manufacturer that supports open source. (Again, regardless of whether you are currently going to install them on a Windows box, Linux Box, Mac, OpenBSD, whatever... as long as it meets your needs, and they have a product that will also work on an open source box.)
If you aren't prepared to make the offending companies hurt in the pocketbook, then to quote Jim Carrey in the movie "Liar Liar", all you guys are:
end of story.-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
>You can grab those off of EBay dirt cheap
I cannot submit purchase orders for Ebay, and "dirt cheap" is not the goal. I (and many others) need a vendor that (A.) asserts, if not guarantees, linux compatability and (B.) has a presence that will pass muster for corporate (and academic institution) purchasing requirements.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>I guess for most people knowledgeable about Linux, this isn't a big issue - they know the answers or know where to get them.
For my personal needs, I definitely fit that description, am slightly willing to do trial-and-error, buy used items, really search for discontinued things, etc.
For my *professional* needs, it is a big problem, one that has led to linux being taken off the table for a project. While I appreciate being steered toward "RaLink" and "Atheros (not so great a solution!)", I also note that I can hardly submit a purchase order to a vendor for a "RaLink" network card. Knowing a part number should be enough, but we have been burned by this before. What is actually required is assurance (a guarantee would be nice) from a vendor that a specific product is serviceable in some version of Linux.
Someone suggested Edimax. I think it's neat that they affirm Linux support in their specs. I think it's less neat that a search for a retailer led me to a lot of UK and European distributors. I'm guessing the big US computer shops and chain stores don't sell Edimax.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Nobodies safe anymore, not XP, not Linux.
"I decide which one of the WLAN chipsets I would like my adapter to be based on (since it determines the major features of the device), and then I search for adapters using it."
Buy one of every device in the store, and hope to find one that has your chipset? We actually did this once. Found one that was Prysm2. Bought the rest. Some turned out to be Broadcom.
"Usually the website of the driver maintainer, or the mailing list of the driver project, or the driver documentation are good places to look for list of adapters based on particular chipsets."
"Usually" == "Never" in this case.
Say I want an 802.11g PCI card that works with Ubuntu 6.06 on an ASUS motherboard. Say I have one chance to find this product, identify a vendor for it, and submit a purchase order. If it doesn't work I don't get another chance.
What exactly do I do? From where I sit, I am totally screwed, because this is actually not possible to do. And this is the problem.
For personal use, I am much more flexible. I know the situation. I know how to research. I know a couple of previous-generation products that I can probably find on Ebay fairly easily, and they have a benefit of being cheap, just because they are old and discontinued or whatever.
For professional use, for one thing, I don't want to work that hard. For another thing, I don't really have that luxury. For another thing, I don't need to give people more reasons to abandon linux.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Free software advocates won't install non-free firmware because that software is non-free. All of the arguments about free software apply to discussions of "firmware" because firmware is software. For those who want their freedom, proprietary software on their systems is not "wonderful".
Theo de Raadt's requests are quite clear: he's not asking for gratis firmware development (and how much that development costs is wildly overestimated so long as people are willing to do this unpaid). He and other OpenBSD hackers are willing to write that software themselves (including maintenance and bugfixes probably for longer than proprietors). He's asking for complete and correct documentation to hardware, and he has also previously stumped for a license to distribute proprietary firmware. This strikes me as a position no proprietor can argue with, yet some do.
Digital Citizen
Why don't hardware makers build cheaper, non-state-of-the-art hardware for open source operating systems, with open source designs and drivers? If they're modern enough to get decent performance they'll sell a ton of them and they'll work for the open source community.
Call me crazy, but paying for a top of the line Nvidia or ATI card that will never have the driver support it needs to be utilized seems like a waste of my money. The same goes for any other piece of hardware that isn't/won't be fully supported by the manufacturers.
While I respect the fact that there are at least a handful of projects underway to develop open source hardware, it's a tough field to enter and likely when they do hit production each batch will sell out before most can get their hands on one. The hardware makers obviously have the resources and financial incentives to make a lower-end, open piece of hardware. The fact that they don't stinks to high heaven.
Am I wrong in thinking that a card with slightly older tech using open source drivers that can actually be optimized to spec is better than a state of the art card with poor drivers (be they open or proprietary)?
-HobophobE
Nothing laughs forever.
But this is exactly the problem! When people ask this question, they get details, and perhaps a link to a list or two. But there is no single up-to-date reliable hardware list that a Linux-user can really rely on. This should be a simple URL of a website that answers all hardware questions: enter a chipset or a product name, and get a list of distros on which it works. Sounds obvious, and necessary, but we still don't have it. Even such a website for a specific distro doesn't exist, to my knowledge - for example the Ubuntu wiki has lists of compatible hardware, but it isn't very convenient or accessible, I've spent a lot of wasted time on it. Also, if a particular model isn't listed, I don't know if that means it wasn't tested, or doesn't work (although some models are marked as not working). And the basic problem is that the Ubuntu wiki could be wrong - I am not aware of anyone doing serious quality control there.
I guess for most people knowledgeable about Linux, this isn't a big issue - they know the answers or know where to get them. Still, a better solution would make things more convenient for them. And newcomers would certainly be much happier.
You know, I'm involved with a reasonably young project that aims to do exactly that - provide a community-powered, up-to-date, comprehensive central Linux hardware compatibility listing. It was launched in autumn, but for various reason, no work was done on it for several months, and we're only just picking up on it again now. So it still needs a whole lot of work, and it could do with more contributors, too. We tried to submit it to Slashdot, but the story was refused.
In case anyone is interested in taking a look, the URL is http://www.tuxpatible.info.
If you think this project has potential and is worthwhile supporting, spread the link, contribute to the website, or if you have mod points and feel like it, mod this post up so that more people may see this!
Basilisk Digital
Ubiquiti Networks sells Atheros-based Mini-PCI cards that may fit your criteria, and the company has been quite good to deal with in my experience.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I connect my desktop to the internet by wireless because running cables to the cable modem is very difficult. After trying to get Linux to work with my wireless PCI card, I finally decided that it is much simpler to use a wireless router as a bridge and connect my desktop to the bridge by ethernet. A cheap wireless router is $40. That's not much more than a wireless PCI card. It's even possible to install Linux on many routers and have quite a bit of control over the configuration of the router.
A little off topic... but, if you need Linux to work with WiFi and other gear that only has Windows drivers, you can run in a virtualized environment like VMWare. No, it's not the right answer, but it's here now and it works. I can't be bothered to fiddle with WiFi drivers just to get into Linux for a few minutes here and there... it's nice to have it just work with the virtualized network drivers provided by VMWare - especially now that VMWare Server is free as in beer.
Funny thing is. All my various wireless cards (which have a Atheros chipset) all work out of the box on Linux distributions that have wireless. I didn't even know this was that much of a issue.
I know with some other chipsets (like broadcom), it's just requiring you to install some package that contains extracted firmware images.
Now Windows on the hand (XP SP2, 2k3 sp1), never had a single wireless card in my experience that worked out of the box with it, ever.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Yes, unfortunately sometimes vendors silently change the chipset used in a particular model. But honestly I think that googling for 10 min before buying is all you need to confirm that you won't run into this pb for the model you are about to buy.
No, this is not true. Look, 6 months ago I was looking for a well-supported PCI wifi adapter. So I basically followed the exact steps I described in my GP post, and I decided to buy one using the Atheros chipset. It turns out that the driver developers (madwifi project) have a very complete list of adapters using this chipset, and therefore fully-supported under Linux. The list literally references 100-200 adapters, 50% of them are probably not sold anymore, but the other 50% are currently sold on the market.
Just buy an Atheros one. It will work with any modern Linux distro. The exact distro or motherboard you use doesn't matter. Most distros have packaged the Atheros kernel modules. And as I understand it Atheros use a unified architecture, so the latest driver will always support all Atheros chipsets.
You're going about this incorrectly. If a piece of hardware works in one distribution, it will theoretically work in all. Granted, it will probably be easier in Ubuntu or Fedora, but just because you may have to work a little harder in Slackware doesn't mean the hardware isn't compatible. The OS is still GNU/Linux, and there are very few hardware-related tools that are propriety among any one of the big distros.
I'm no Computer Scientist.. but as near as I can tell, my Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 motherboard gets it's firmware from the OS. It's got onboard VITESSE 8201 gigabit lan. I deduced this from the fact that I cannot reboot from XP to ubuntu (if I want LAN). I have shutdown, then physically unplug the power supply, wait 30 seconds then power up and boot linux. Otherwise LAN driver wont work in linux.
Kinda sucks.
Wouldn't these chipset changes have made the cards unsuitable for your corporate needs even in Windows?
I know incompatible chipset changes in anything would make me nervous, from a support standpoint. Perhaps some pressure could be applied to vendors to abandon the practice?
You're going about this incorrectly. If a piece of hardware works in one distribution, it will theoretically work in all. Granted, it will probably be easier in Ubuntu or Fedora, but just because you may have to work a little harder in Slackware doesn't mean the hardware isn't compatible. The OS is still GNU/Linux, and there are very few hardware-related tools that are propriety among any one of the big distros.
I think you're missing the point about what exactly tuxpatible.info is meant to be.
Yes, theoretically, something that works in one distro will indeed work in all of them. Practically, however, this is often not the case. Are you seriously claiming that all Linux distros have identical hardware support / recognition? If that was really so, hardware recognition wouldn't be such a major point in Linux distro reviews. Fact is: Not every distro includes every driver, not every distro includes the same version of every driver, not every distro is perfectly bug-free, and so on, and so on.
Tuxpatible isn't just meant to answer the question, "Is there a Linux driver available for $HARDWARE". It's meant to answer more specific questions, like: "What distros will $HARDWARE work well with?" or "Will $HARDWARE work with my distro of choice?", or "What do I have to do to get $HARDWARE working on my distro of choice?", or "How do I fix this common problem with $HARDWARE under my distro of choice?"
Basilisk Digital
I have a built-in Broadcom BCM4318 wireless card. I actually found Linux drivers for it. To use it, I needed to extract the firmware from the windows drivers. After that (and tinkering) I could actually connect and send packets. But, alas, any request was painfully slow and had a lot of duplicate packets. So, I just gave up and went with Ndiswrapper. Oh well...
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
And there you have it. As it always has been in linux land. if you go to the big box computer wearhouse and buy crap willy-nilly you cant expect it to work when you get home. Linux works great if you buy supported hardware and make informed purchasing deciciosn like you just mentioned. It avoids the problems with the crap-level broadcom and other wifi hardware that is lower grade than a $3.95 winmodem.
It blows my mind how the linux community continues to make the low grade hardware work instead of universally blackballing it Broadcom would actually pay attention if the linux community as a whole said "buy nothing with broadcom chipsets, it is low grade dog food"... But that is the problem, the linux community cant get congealed on a topic except for MS hate... hardware that is supported by the vendor get's some allocades but flamed to a crisp by "purists" becuse they dare to release a binary only driver to honor some silly legal agreements they signed.
The biggest thing holding back linux from taking over the desktop like wildfire is that our diversity looks like a huge group of never happy children. we bitch about everything and everyone while some like the challenge of reverse engineering a piece of hardware the maker tried hard to make linux resistant.
Every single linux PC I built for relatives to switch them to linux from windows is 100% functional and perfect. I tellthem it's like a MAC, if the software and hardware does not say for linux on the box , then do not buy it. This tactic works great, I get the initial question about software, point them at the add new software on the ubuntu start menu and never get a call again except for thanks or who to send money to to pay for the new software they just installed from that menu. (I tell them to donate $10.00 for each app to the ubuntu org.) Linux on linux supported hardware just works.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
a big reason why you don't see that list is because vendors change underlying chipsets from time to time. I have three wifi cards with the same model number (including sub versions, etc) from the same manuf, that have seperate chipsets for each of them. zyd, rum and ural. thankfully, they bumped the pci id. from the outside, the only thing different about them is the mac address, and those are in the same allocation.
One issue you ignore is that firmware blobs could, potentially, contain backdoors or spying software connected to whatever bus(es) they're connected to. While it's certainly possible for hardware to be directly bugged, it's much easier (and cheaper) to allow for upgradeable bugging. Truthfully, main CPUs could fall under this same problem. But I think in the long term, the desire is to open as much as possible so that users of a system can better trust the system. Getting hardware to work in the first place without some huge hurdle for users is merely a first step. It is, after all, the case that people buy hardware for the functionality the hardware can perform well. So, I don't think there's a reasonable fear of them becoming obsolete. They just have to fear not gaining as much profits or perhaps being associated with the shoddy programming of other developers (at least one reasonable reason for why they might wish to only have their own code be used; whether the adversarial approach of keeping code closed and being as tight-lipped about hardware as possible is reasonable is another issue).
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Can't you use Froogle to find out vendors once you know part brands or part numbers like the rest of us?
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
Who cares about HAL? Do you want to reprogram chip to use frequencies not allowed in your country?
I don't care.
Otherwise Atheros drivers are free - BSD and GPL licensed.
The bottom line is ... well the bottom line in dollars.
... if you can get the firmware running.
Programming embedded CPUs and DSPs can do the same tasks cheaper than larger silicon when there is a large number of units produced, bugs can be fixed without recalls, and new features can be added.
It's better for everybody
--I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Similarly, owners of wireless devices have paid for, and the wireless device vendors have sold and received money for a permission to download the firmware to the device. I doubt the wireless vendors have any right to force users to use Windows or the Windows driver to send that firmware file to the device.
In many countries, specifically in Norway, where I live, there are laws to protect the right to do reverse engineering. Any license agreement not to do reverse engineering is invalid here. The laws say explicitly that these provisions cannot be overruled by agreeements between the parties. It should be possible to extract the firware from the driver in a country that allows this.
I strongly doubt that distributing the firmware code to owners of the corresponding devices can properly be seen as distribution against the permission of the copyright holder. It may even not be considered to be "distribution" in the sense of the IP laws. While companies may try to convince judges about anything they see convenient, especially if they have secret arrangements with a monopolistic software vendor, it is not too likely that the courts will believe them.
I am more uncertain about the inclusion of the firmware blob in e.g. Linux distributions. Instead linux distributions could be equipped with software that automatically searches the net for the binary blob. Such software would only work if the computer has another way of getting connected. On the other hand, the software could be made to do this under Windows too.
Here I am talking about the firmware, not the driver. As more functionality is moved into the driver, it probably becomes more difficult to reverse engineer the device driver even if the firmware blob can be successfully loaded into the device. Still it should be doable, while reverse engineering the firmware is next to impossible.
There is no substitute for common sense. Especially, no body of rules will do.
There are sound economic reasons to use firmware that must be loaded at boot time rather than the slightly more expensive EEPROM, and a good technical reason as well. Ever since Intel's embarrassment over the Pentium's infamous bug, microprocessors have included the ability to load microcode patches at boot. Engineers learned from that experience that there must be a way to fix HW problems with firmware patches. If you have ever upgraded the firmware on a device only to have a power failure at the critical time that the EEPROM was being reflashed, you know what the technical advantage is.
Since the device itself may have information about its internal state that isn't disclosed to the CPU, there should be a mechanism for it to signal the host that it needs a fresh copy of its firmware overlay. I'm sure that systems programmers can think of a few other items to go on the list. Now all we need is a working group of the major players to come up with a standard. Maybe it could be done as an extension of Open Firmware.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
>Just buy an Atheros one.
You *can not* simply walk into a computer store and ask for "an Atheros chipset wi-fi card."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>Wouldn't these chipset changes have made the cards unsuitable for your corporate needs even in Windows?
If the changes meant that the devices did not have any possibility of working under Windows at all, then yes.
In the case of Linux compatability, that's exactly what happened. Same brand, same model, indistinguishable
from the box or inventory item code. Totally different device.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
>You're going about this incorrectly. If a piece of hardware works in one distribution, it will theoretically work in all.
I understand that very well. If the variety of distributions is what's scaring the manufacturers away, I hope they get over it.
But even though this thread has gone on for a while, I can't help but notice that few have given specific answers.
What Wi-fi card would you buy today? Not "what chipset would you like to have?" How would you identify it? How would you explain to a disinterested third party exactly what you need them to bring you?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
"But honestly I think that googling for 10 min before buying is all you need to confirm that you won't run into this pb for the model you are about to buy. "
I don't want to be "about to buy" something before I know definitively that it will work for my application. If Googling can help with that, what are the search terms please? Googling for "802.11g works with linux" gets me a lot of information I already know: That devices with specific chipsets are better for us than others.
Sparking the gap between knowing what chipset you want, and knowing what to order and from where, to get that chipset, is what I've been after in this thread, and many others just like it. Once I got an answer: D-Link DWL-520. I was able to obtain one, but not before discovering that D-Link had changed the circuit.
Going from the 'chipset' direction is great if you already have the peripheral, and if you happen to be lucky.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
But you can use this list of Atheros-based adapters. I used it 8 months ago to buy an SMCWPCI-G card for about $20, and I ended up with a perfectly working card under Linux.
Let me give you a concrete example. 8 months ago I did my research, settled on the Atheros chipset, decided to buy an SMC card because newegg had plenty of them, in particular their PCI model SMCWPCI-G. At this point I was about to buy it, so I googled for '''SMCWPCI-G linux problems''', '''SMCWPCI-G linux "not detected"''', '''SMCWPCI-G linux "does not work"''' (in other words, the kind of research you would do IF the card wouldn't work for you). And it quickly became clear to me that no major problems were reported with it, so I bought it. I don't know why people don't do such simple searches before buying, it is so effective to stay away from potentially problematic devices...
In the past, firmware was usually on a flash chip onboard the device. Often it was still loaded from there into the device's ram by the driver (I know, I've written drivers that did just that). There's no significant difference between loading the firmware from a flash chip and loading it from disk, except that you don't have to pay for a flash chip.
This is much like the inkjet ink and toner cartridge problem. Almost all the toners are actually the same or extremely close and compatible. But the manufacturers keep brining out new models of cartridges for new models of printers so that they can sell the razor blades. Incompatibility drives up the prices, and even the costs, for everyone. It is dumb marketing, not good business.
ndiswrapper: this is what I am using right now to post via a Linksys WUSB11 v.4 with sompe strage chipset. It was 0.99 on ebay.
DriverLoader: commercial driver loader. The people that make it also make kernels for FC6 with 16K stack size so that the driver will load.
realkiwi
So, SMC cards are linux-compatable then? Is that what you just said? I was hoping to be able to go to the SMC product site, and get a list of devices for which there is linux support. They don't have that, so I picked a PCI 802.11/b/g card, only to find there is no linux driver for it, and to find nothing at all to indicate what chipset it is based on. Would you stake your reputation on a retailer knowing something about the device that isn't on the company's website? This is just another example of the difficulty in speccing linux for any application that requires wireless networking. And in today's world, wireless networking isn't exactly some luxury add-on. It's actually a candidate for "the killer app of the century."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
There have been attempts made to produce hardware specifically for the Linux market, when there has been a perceived demand and a lack of products coming from the Windows side. Specifically, there is a company producing HDTV tuner cards specifically for Linux.
The company could be a model, I think, for the type of "open hardware" development that you're talking about. They went out and designed a card specifically to be compatible with Linux, including using parts that were well documented, working with manufacturers, writing open-source drivers, etc. The company's name is pcHDTV.
The result? It's a bit of a mess, actually. In fact, I've had people recommend to me that I use a Windows TV tuner card, rather than the pcHDTV one, because -- get this -- the drivers are better. That's right: the drivers produced by a company doing all the right things, and in good faith (as far as I can tell), are widely assumed to be worse than the reverse-engineered ones for undocumented Windows tuner cards. And in their defense, it's not really their fault. The open-source drivers they release do work at the time of their release, but tend to get broken in time, and the developers don't have the resources to keep up with the interface changes. Because the product is seen by the community as being 'commercially supported,' the drivers don't get the same attention by other parties as the reverse-engineered ones do, and the end result is they end up not working as well.
A comment made by one of the driver developers on their technical support Forum is telling:
I hesitate to quote this guy, because it's obvious he's responding to a frustrated user, and I don't want to get him in trouble, but I think the point he makes is an important one. Linux is widely perceived as a difficult platform not to develop on per se, but to maintain software on. Even with a company that's ideologically motivated to support Linux, working with the community can be very difficult.
There are a shortage of examples that you can really point to as models for Linux "open hardware" development. Before we can even think about making something as complex as a WLAN card, the basic issues at play here with pcHDTV need to be worked out. Nobody wants to develop hardware and promise to support it, for a platform that's constantly in flux. Users don't want to buy hardware that's not supported at least at a basic level with their chosen OS/distro. And so you have a chicken-and-egg problem.
"Open hardware" would definitely be a solution to the rapidly-closing world of commodity hardware, which promises to only cause more grief to alternative OSes in the future (barring some sort of governmental action, which seems unlikely); however, for th
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Weren't you already directed to Edimax (and given a US-based address to contact about purchasing from them, too) the first time you asked? USA Branch Office Edimax Computer Company 3350 Scott Blvd., Bldg.15 Santa Clara, CA 95054 TEL : 1-408-496-1105 FAX : 1-408-980-1530 sales@edimax.com If that's not enough of a push in the right direction, then there may be other issues.
OSx86 FTW
As this story is about devices requiring proprietary firmware to run, it seems prudent to point out that anything using the rt73 driver also needs to load firmware before it's usable.
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Actually, going by your US/JP example, it may be causing problems. WiFi channels go up to 11 in the States, but Japan goes up to channel 14, which may be locked out of US firmware because the FCC prohibits the use of channels 12-14 for whatever reason. This may be why Sony complained somewhat when people in the US downloaded JP firmware to their PSPs. For that matter, a US laptop could also be breaking Japanese wireless regulations. For example, in Japan it's illegal to use 802.11a outdoors (and the manual that came with my import laptop stated as much- to avoid breaking the law I have turn off 802.11a while outdoors) while I'm sure the US doesn't have such a regulation.
OSx86 FTW
I've asked a thousand times and never had answered very well:
List wireless cards, vendors, and prices that I can obtain today, which do work with Linux.
The compatability lists on the linux wireless sites are useless -- sure there are lots of cards that work, but many of them
have been discontinued for years, some were only available in certain locales, and some, if you found the model, have had their
chipsets changes.
I know of no resource that would allow me to successfully pursue wither of the following use cases:
1. I want to purchase an 802.11g device guaranteed by the vendor to work with some version of Linux.
2. I want to make a purchase order for a wireless device by vendor and part number, for a corpoarte deployment.
I consider my wireless cards to be rare and treasured artifacts. I didn't upgrade my notebook because I knew I was extremely
lucky to get a laptop with a built-in Prysm2. The situation *sucks* far worse than the winmodem situation ever did.
I've been reading this thread and the answers to this poster and I must say it is rather humorous. Probably not so for the poster, but it does show precisely why Linux is on the decline these days.
This poor guy is trying to find out where a professional company can source a large order of supported (and supportable) linux hardware from a reputable vendor, and the answer appears to be that there is none. Instead of actually answering his question (since they don't know the answer or there is no answer), the community responds with "chipset x is cool," "read the source," and "buy stuff on ebay." One does wonder what kind of support or warranty comes from ebay ... oh, that's right, NONE.
If you want to stake your business on Linux either slashdot is the wrong place to ask or this is a suicidal endeavour. It is sad since Linux peaked in 2000 with all the big vendors backing Linux, but after the crash of the stock market, the SCO lawsuit, and Microsoft's various FUD and "anti-piracy (if you use Linux on a system you're pirating Windows!)" campaigns this is the state of affairs we are in. No reputable company proclaiming Linux support and a splintered community with no good answers for anyone. Great.
I have to wonder why more people in the Linux community do not see this as a problem. To my mind it is a problem only the Linux community can fix since the big corporations are not going to come save our hides after all. Otherwise Linux will just remain a toy hobby OS that ascerbic geeks use in basements instead of a powerhouse that topples Microsoft in the Server and Desktop Markets. Granted there are plenty in the community who want this very result, but I kind of thought there was a *movement* here. If you want a revolution you have to work for it.
Sure, they *might* be able to prevent them from distributing the firmware itself, but the hardware owner already has that as part of the vendor supplied driver. The OSS driver can simply harvest it from that.
Which works well but has a severe draw-back : it only exist for the few platforms nVidia choose to release it on (mostly x86 running Linux ; maybe x86-64, and if you're lucky a couple of BSD variants, and that's all. No way to use it on anything else : be it PPC, Sprac, SuperH processors running Haiku or Plan 9, etc.)
It's normal that ATI and nVidia can't support every possible combination of architectures under the sun, that'll require too much work for realy small markets.
BUT, they aren't doing anything that could help hobbyist to develop their own drivers. That'll need the hardware specification being released, but that's not the case.
for ATI, specs are only available up to R2xx (Radeon 9250), R3xx and R4xx (9500 to X850) had to be reverse engineered, and R5xx (X1300 and up) still lack any opensource implementation.
for nVidia the situation is even worse, a lot of work is still needed to make the Nouveau drivers work
only Intel seem to have a long history of supporting open-source implementation for it's graphic chipsets.
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