Atheros Releases Free Linux Driver For Its 802.11n Devices

mcgrof writes "Atheros has released a shiny new Atheros driver for all their 11n devices aimed for inclusion in the Linux kernel. This new driver has no proprietary HAL and is licensed under the ISC license, so the BSD community should be able to benefit as well. Note: no firmware required!"

Comments

Broadcomm next??

[LVSlushdat]

Now... if we can just get Broadcomm to do the same.....

Great news! Vote with you wallet.

[nikolajsheller]

This is great!
I applaud Atheros for taking this step, and I will be buying Atheros hardware in the future due to this move.

May other companies learn from this initiative.

Re:As a new Linux desktop user

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

Please don't take this as an insult, I actually congratulate you for don't giving up and learning about your OS while solving an actual issue.

Anyway, my point is: If you know Unix, and have at least some specific knowledge of GNU/Linux, the atheros cards work out of the box. There are two drivers, one proprietary, the other free, both of them work like a charm if you are connecting as a client (I Haven't tried them in other modes since I have an ath chipset in the built-in wlan of my Toshiba laptop, which being a laptop is allmost allways used as a station) I know there are limitations in other modes, specially access point mode, but that's beyond the normal use of a cheap wireless card.
I think you can even try to load the windows driver with ndiswrapper to get certain functionality that might not be available in the GNU/Linux drivers ( I haven't tried ath with ndiswrapper, but most drivers work with it anyway ).

So, this is the beauty of Unix: If you understand the paradigm behind the design of the system, you can use any Unix application. Even if you haven't used it before, all it takes is a quick man page read to get the specifics, the rest, you already know it all.

If to this you add certain specific knowledge about the particular implementation you are going to use, add practice and if you have a general common sense and are a logical person, with at least a normal IQ, you will feel like a fish in the water and be able to do virtually anything with your system after a year or so of using it.

If you don't have this two prerequisites, and try to start using it expecting to get things actually done the first time you try, you will be very dissapointed. If OTOH, you accept you are learning and try harder, again and again, until you get it right, you will learn A LOT, and become skilled on this stuff very quickly, like you did.

If you pretend to use the system as an end-user without learning ANYTHING about it, You can do that too, and have a great user experience, if you follow the rules that would apply in this situation to any other system.

This means:
  - An end user of windows or mac buys a computer with the OS preinstalled and configured or get some tech guy to do it for them.
  - An end user of windows or mac uses the functionality that is officially supported by the OS, doesn't download and install beta or experimental software, doesn't try to add complex hardware himself, and calls a tech guy to fix the computer once in a while.

The problem with this kind of endusers that refuse to learn (which is ok) is that they don't apply this rules to GNU/Linux, and so they install themselves, add beta and experimental stuff, try to get not supported hardware working, and essentially do a lot of things they don't have the lesser idea how to do properly, and then complain that things doesn't work.

I'm not saying this is your case, I'm just making a point about how something that starts with a user trying GNU/Linux and doing things beyond their current knowledge and beyond what's safe for a beginner can go the right way, proving the power of Unix and it's not so steppy learning curve (like your experience) or can end up with an asshole bitching arround in forums about things not working and then calling his son to get windows loaded on the machine again.