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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!"
for my AR5212
Geology - it's not rocket science; it's rock science
Now... if we can just get Broadcomm to do the same.....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
No blob, ISC license, and supporting .11n? That only leaves one question: is there a miniPCI card available containing this chipset that I can plug into a little router board?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No more weighing the lesser of two evils, I can cross off all the laptops with Broadcom chips and narrow the playing field.
I wasted untold hours with the b43 driver and routinely get bitten when I upgrade kernels and madwifi falls apart and I can't load the new source because it fell apart. Wireless hardware that just works will be a relief.
Does anybody know the HW capabilities of the Atheros chipset?
Thinking of Software Radio...
thegodmovie.com - watch it
That's why I bought the Dell Inspiron 1420n. I KNEW that everything would work under Linux.
When I finally upgrade my home's network, you can bet I'll be going with Atheros.
ath9k - Atheros unveils free Linux driver for its 802.11n devices Â
We are pleased to announce Atheros has released ath9k to the community. This driver is aimed at inclusion to the Linux kernel and supports all Atheros IEEE 802.11n devices. This represents a major shift in terms of support from Atheros with respect to Linux. The ath9k driver comes shortly after Atheros hired two key Linux wireless developers -- Luis Rodriguez and Jouni Malinen.
We have been informed Atheros does plan to add access point support to ath9k and to work with the community to enhance and complete access point support in the Linux kernel. It is understood there is plenty of work required on the wireless stack to complete full access point support. Jouni Malinen will help drive this process within the community while Luis helps enhance regulatory compliance in the Linux kernel.
We are eager to work with Atheros with ath9k and applaud their efforts for properly supporting Linux.
The ath9k driver includes supports for the following chipsets:
* AR5418+AR5133
* AR5416+AR5133
* AR5416+AR2133
* AR9160
* AR9280
* AR9281
How does this affect 802.11 B and G devices? Can I expect greater stability in those products, or does this only help out 802.11n hardware?
Pretend I said something meaningful or insightful here.
No, really, this is GREAT news all around and I can't think of a catch. Kudos Atheros!
And it's been in the kernel for at least one major release. ath5k is the name
I have a few of these devices and they work pretty well with the driver. They don't do access point mode yet, but that will come soon.
Atheros hired Luis R. Rodriguez, the developer of the Linux kernel Atheros driver, back in April with the intention of doing just this. Congratulations!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The driver itself is open source but depends on the proprietary Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that is available in binary form only.
Breakfast served all day!
I have. Screw Broadcom. Anyone who buys their products deserves the hell they are helping to support.
Broadcom is EXTREMELY anal retentive about anything that looks remotely proprietary. On their CPU's, they dropped Linux support for the Sibyte stuff that they bought up as soon as they could. I know some guys who are stuck having to support development efforts with such products, and my heart goes out to them.
The one good bit of news is that they do have a suppposedly serious effort on the Wifi side. The bad news is that they have some very bad engineers doing it. Let me give you an example. The main guy in charge, who thinks he's God gift to Linux (and of course, no one's ever heard of him), decided to do a complete BSP *from scratch* for this effort.
Needless to say, the work is behind schedule. Oh, and they don't have any real plans in place to support it. It's the toss-it-over-the-wall and move on to the next platform approach.
This is crazy, expensive and of course a lot of work. I'm not a fan of Windriver, and far less so of Montavista. But honestly, for the $10-20 grand they cost, that's cheap in comparison to what Broadcom is trying (and failing) to pull off.
Even if they do actually manage to get something out, expect a low quality half-assed effort. That is, expect lots of bugs.
And that assumes that Broadcom WILL actually decide to release the source. That decision hasn't been made, last I heard.
I haven't looked at the Atheros stuff yet. But the fact that they are out there, and will be for a long time at the way Broadcom is going, seems to speak of them being quite clueful.
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.
After struggling with Zydas ZD1211, various Broadcrap cards and two TI ACX cards, I tried using atheros. After that, I ordered 10 minipci cards to use in my various devices (NAS, Laptop, routers etc.). And by the look of things, I'm never going back ;)
I just get Intel laptops with Centrino...works perfectly.
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I fundamentally believe proprietary software is both unfair and stupid.
Fortunately for people who write code and don't want to work for a megacorp, others who respect other people's rights have an edge over you. :)
"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
I have a dv5030us of the dv5000 series. But this applies to nearly all Pavilion models. If you take out the Broadcom card and replace it with something that is not Broadcom (or does not have its ID in the BIOS), then the BIOS will boot and say "Unsupported hardware detected. Remove and reboot." I wanted official support for wireless. I bought an Atheros card off eBay, installed it, got exactly what everyone was saying it would do. Then, I found this web site: http://www.richud.com/HP-Pavilion-104-Bios-Fix/ . And, I had to hex edit my BIOS and reflash as well. Quite something, HP, doing a hardware lock-in with a vendor who refuses to release specs on their hardware.
Not entirely sure what you mean.
If you Google the at risk bits in your computer (wifi, webcam) then you'll very easily be able to tell if it works or not.
The number of things that dont work is very small these days.
Its improving all the time.
Anyone know of a good WAP that uses the Atheros chipset? I have a Linksys WRT600N (wifi-N, GbE and USB) and while their European models use Atheros, the U.S. models use Broadcom chipsets.
Come to think of it, anyone interested in doing a little gray market exporting?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
How did you get an Atheros in your Santa Rosa? Lucky bastard. Most of them have the Broadcom 4328 which is wireless-n and apparently is far away from being reverse engineered. https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/2008-May/007517.html The broadcom linux wireless driver project doesn't have enough people willing and able to reverse engineer that card and the wireless n layer it seems.
So which are the laptops with Broadcom chips? I know my Presario V3000 has but I didn't know that when I bought it. I'll be looking more closely for my next laptop purchase. Is there is up-to-date somewhere that I can check?
Belkin
* N1 Wireless Notebook Card
D-Link
* DWA-642 RangeBooster N Notebook Adapter
* DWA-645 RangeBooster N650 Notebook Adapter
* DWA-542 RangeBooster N Desktop Adapter
* DWA-547 RangeBooster N650 Desktop Adapter
* DWA-652 XtremeN Notebook Adapter
* DWA-552 XtremeN Desktop Adapter
* DWA-643 Xtreme N ExpressCard Notebook Adapter
* DWA-556 Xtreme N PCIe Desktop Adapter
Linksys
* WPC300Nv2
* WMP300Nv2
* WPC100N
* WMP110N
NEC
* WL300NC
Netgear
* WNHDE111 Video Bridge
* WN711, Wireless-N eXpresscard adapter
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Buy hardware, and if it doesn't contain the right chipset send it back to the manufacturer with the reason for the return ("Unlabeled change in chipset, product is no longer compatible").
I've seen some hardware have the chipset printed on the box. My PCMCIA card from Netgear incidentally had the Atheros logo on the box.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
From the MadWifi homepage:
The driver itself is open source but depends on the proprietary Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that is available in binary form only.
That's for the madwifi driver.
...yes, they're all written by the madwifi group...
We're talking about the ath9k driver.
There's also ath5k, that does not uses HAL.
"I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn't know." -- Mark Twain
Unfortunately the Centrino driver (at least the one included with Backtrack 3) does not support injection, so isn't much good for wardriving.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
You probably want this, or a variant of this for your distro: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=789824
Also bear in mind that Network Manager can be a pain in the ass and might be the cause of your trouble. On my laptop it routinely forgets my AP name and WAP password, so I have to open it up an re-enter the password every time I reboot Ubuntu.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Awesome, spectacular and I hope everyone buys atheros based chipsets.
Hopefully with a concerted effort we can provide atheros enough cash to buy broadcom, fire its board, and can its management.
Then, have a massive open source party wuv fest with opening the broadcom chipsets and publishing the specifications.
I am pleased that at least, some manufacturers are beginning to see, that open hardware yields better drivers and better experience for the consumer.
I hope it continues.
VIA, Atheros look like they just "get it".
Awesome.
-Hackus
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.