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Broadcom Releases Source Code For Drivers
I'm Not There (1956) writes "Broadcom, the world's largest manufacturer of Wi-Fi transceivers, open sources its Linux device drivers. This is a big win for Linux users, as there are a lot of users that face Wi-Fi problems when they use Linux on their laptops. With these device drivers now open source, distributions can ship them out-of-the-box, and that means no Linux Wi-Fi problems for new devices and upcoming distributions at all."
I know alot of the chipsets didn't support it and I ended up buying an external atheros a ways back. Albeit, cracking wifi network is mostly a shits and giggles operation - it can come in handy occasionally. So, does anyone know if open source driver = packet injection or is it limited at the hardware level?
Oh and of the course, the obligatory hoorah for open source.
Now maybe I'll finally be able to get wireless working on my two Dell laptops!
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Congratulations Broadcom, you have just made at least one geek very happy.
While you're at it, any chance of releasing the source for your video decoders? I promise that you will own the HTPC market if you do.
--- "When you're strange"
Broadcom wirelss. Cause of a 100 page thread on the Ubuntu forums (and innumerable posts elsewhere) by people trying to get those bloody cards working under Linux.
So speaking as one of the many sufferers, how long before I can just slap Linux on an old Acer laptop and expect the wireless to just work?
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Take heart - you're still in the running for lamest post.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
This might get me to go back to my old dual-boot setup. I very much a linux beginner, and used Ubuntu pretty exclusively for the first couple of years of grad school. I loved aspects of it, but going round the houses with madwifi, ndiswrapper, and the like to get my broadcom wifi adapter to behave properly just became too difficult. For me this may significantly lower a major barrier of entry to using linux distros as everyday operating systems.
No one is saying that device drives will magically start working flawlessly because their source code is open, although it will make it easier to track down bugs (see Linus Torvalds' quote about the number of eyeballs).
The main point, however, is that now Linux distributions can ship these drives out of the box, so wireless devices will work straight away. Until now the biggest (and dare I say only?) problem I've had with installing Linux on a laptop is finding and installing the right drivers for wireless network cards.
Uh... the manufacturer is providing open source drivers for their hardware. Except for random edge cases, yeah... drivers tend to work reliably. What are you smoking?
It took them almost 10 years before they released open-source drivers. Must be freaking smart
Looking forward to much broader DD-WRT support for Broadcom hardware in the near future
Oh, lighten the hell up guys, troll? Seriously? Just because I'm pointing out that the open drivers have their fair share of issues too? Open Source is not some magic pixie dust that makes the drivers impervious to mistakes, I'm very happy that it's open source because that means that I might be able to install Fedora on my IdeaPad without wrestling with the broadcom driver(It's sort of working now), but you can't possibly believe that open sourcing the driver will remove every issue with it?
-- Linux user #369862
Not bullshit at all. It means that programmers can now fix the code and release stable versions with linux updates. Meaning (virtually) no problems for Broadcom wifi in future releases and updates.
Yes - hooray!
Yay! This is definitely nice. Granted, I luckily didn't run into a bit of trouble getting the broadcom card in my laptop to work using the NDIS wrapper last time I set it up on Ubuntu 10.04, but either way it's good to have open source drivers rather than finding quirky ways to make proprietary ones work.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
The big thing isn't that they're open sourcing the driver - it's that Broadcom is releasing a Linux driver. Open Sourcing it is icing on the cake, but the main point is that the driver is from Broadcom for their hardware.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Just do a quick search for rt2x00 bugs, they've been open sourced a long time, and still has plenty of bugs and failures. It's not magic, it wont' make all problems go away. Yet, that's what the claim is.
-- Linux user #369862
and that means no Linux Wi-Fi problem for new devices and upcoming distributions at all.
Yes, because open source drivers means that they always work, no matter how strange or obscure your hardware and software combination is. That's right, just like all other open source software that never, ever, fails to live up to expectations under any situation. In fact the news is so remarkable that the sun just came out where I live, and I think some very peaceful velociraptors just woke from a very long sleep and are peacefully munching on cabbage, all thanks to this incredible news.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
They've had a binary driver out for some time, I'm using broadcom-sta on my IdeaPad.
-- Linux user #369862
I tried Ubuntu quite some time ago on my aging Acer Aspire 5000. I really like the idea behind linux and open source. Got everything to work. Except for the WiFi. Well since being wired all the time is a drag, I was forced to go back to dreaded XP. I'm not a complete n00b when it comes to computers. But fiddling with WiFi for a few hours was just to much effort for me as a casual user. Hopefully I can now finally switch.
huh? i've been using the proprietary wl driver for years.
Dude, they're computer programs. Get a grip.
Bow-ties are cool.
Iam getting laid with Windows users.
You should be careful - most Windows users have viruses.
Maybe I'm about a year behind on Broadcom on Linux, but last I looked you had to use NDISWrapper with the Windows driver to get it to work, and Broadcom had no actual driver (was using a 2007 era HP Laptop).
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
We have Broadcom's ineptitude up until this point to thank for NDISWRAPPER IMHO.
I think the single largest source of linux troubles on laptops has been due to Broadcom devices. They have a HUGE marketshare.
Thanks broadcom. Who knows what good will come from the next time you drag your heels?
Seriously though: I hope this is a sign of things to come.
Tomato Firmware is still stuck on Linux 2.4 because Broadcom's driver blob hasn't been ported to 2.6, Don't know how much of a difference it'd make for my WRT54GL, really, but it'd still be nice to be more modern than ~2.4.17.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
That's probably a couple of years behind, actually.
-- Linux user #369862
First post!
As the article states, the source only supports the newer 11n chipsets, which is currently BCM4313, BCM43224, and BCM43225. G and lower chipsets still have to use the older crusty stuff. Still something good to look towards the future for. I'm going to be keeping an eye out for routers that have those chipsets and are dd-wrt compatible in the future when I move to N now.
To the Broadcom team and everyone else who made this happen: you have my heartfelt thanks.
If you go look where the code is said to be, it's not there:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git;a=tree;f=drivers/staging
And where's the license?
Sooo.... when does it trickle down to my laptop, so I can finally use it for some serious work for a change?
It's good that they've released source for drivers.
It would be better still if they released documentation for their hardware that would be adequate to write a driver.
It's said that source code is the best documentation, but it only documents what the source is doing; not why it's doing it, what it could do, and what it shouldn't do.
"""
The driver is currently available in staging-next git tree, available at:
git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git
in the drivers/staging/brcm80211 directory.
"""
Do you see a brcm80211 directory here? I don't.
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git;a=tree;f=drivers/staging;h=3a9ba849b916d04ebe7f79dc02c31a46cea815e0;hb=HEAD
and that means no Linux Wi-Fi problem for new devices and upcoming distributions at all.
That is, no problems besides those in the open sourced code.
But you had to be innecessarily agressive. Well, you reap what you sow.
(And no, this comment isn't Insightful or anything else; actually I probably HBT).
I hate having to jump through hoops to install debian on dell hardware.
09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0
(see Linus Torvalds' quote about the number of eyeballs)
I'm pretty sure that was E.S.R, who called it Linus's Law. Probably from his Cathedral and the Bazaar book. Remember that? Or him, come to think of it :D
This will be awesome! I've been waiting and waiting for drivers for my wireless card to be released. Halelujiah!
See the b43 driver and b43-fwcutter utility.
Speaking as one who routinely works on open and closed projects, believing the documentation would be tempting, but usually a mistake.
The driver reflects the reality. If well commented (particularly if it has developers venting frustration), it really reflects the reality of how that doc got implemented in reality.
Often documentation is first written, then parts fabricated/code developed. When the fabricated parts come in, often there are minor different and/or incorrect interpretations of the spec, major enough to make the doc unusable, often minor enough to work with a change to the driver. When this happens, the driver will get updated, but going back to the documentation... No, not so much.
Particularly when it comes to the 'what it could do' part, at best it's not already done because they decided not to fund it and it is simply untested and may or may not work. Frequently it's because that capability was so fubared in testing that the feature was thrown over the fence to make a schedule.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
(And no, this comment isn't Insightful or anything else; actually I probably HBT).
Yes, agreed.
The big problem with Linux Wifi is not necessarily the drivers, but the usability of the rest of the stack. On Windows and Mac it's easy to connect to a wireless network; you can do it in a few clicks and enter a password, because the Wifi tool is part of the GUI. Then you are done.
On Linux, the Wifi tool may (or may not) be part of your desktop environment. There may be several possibilities for your desktop environment and included in your distribution. As a new user, you will not know which is the right one. If you find the right one, then it may (or may not) work. If it does work, then it may support WPA2 and other modern Wifi standards, or it may be limited to WEP. Finally, even if everything has worked so far, it may (or may not) remember the settings for next time.
No wonder we all end up hacking wpa_supplicant.conf.
It's good that we get driver source code. Thanks Broadcom. But really, thanks to ndiswrapper (awesome software!) drivers haven't been a big issue for a while. The rest of the stack is, as always, the problem.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
Proper code has comments with exactly that.
Ubuntu 10.10 is in Beta, and presumably a feature freeze -- is it possible to sneak these into the development for 10.10? If there's one thing I hate about installing Linux on my netbook, it's getting the fscking wifi drivers working shuttling files via USB thumb drive because I lost the eithernet cable or don't have access to a physical port.
Yes, this is a real problem for some people, and many college dorms are starting to go wifi only, meaning you have to hijack a library or computerlab eithernet connection to fix the wifi on your linux netbook.
moox. for a new generation.
As a counterpoint, I found it dead easy with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an Asus 701. It was about as many clicks and menus as it takes on OS X and WinXP. Now a given distribution may not always make it that easy for you but this should basically be solved for the distros intended for desktop use.
No one is saying that device drives will magically start working flawlessly because their source code is open, although it will make it easier to track down bugs (see Linus Torvalds' quote about the number of eyeballs).
Microsoft has something better than "eyeballs": the Static Driver Verifier. This has been under development for a few years, and now, Windows 7 drivers don't get signed unless they pass static verification.
This is real proof of correctness, in actual production use. It doesn't guarantee that the driver will run the device properly, but it does guarantee that the driver won't crash the OS.
hmm .. I still have to see a driver for any wireless card that crashes linux. Worst case scenario, it just doesn't work, which was incidentally the problem I had with my broadcom adapter on an Acer Aspire One D250. but crash the OS? not really, no.
"DRM is like the Ford Pinto: it's a smooth ride, right up the point at which it explodes and ruins your day."-C.Doctorow
Agreed. And I'm glad that recent Ubuntus have improved in this regard.
The tao of democracy: the government you can vote for is not the real government.
> But apparantly all the 12 year olds with Ubuntu has mod points today, and I probably offended their religion.
You really can't understand why you're getting modded down? That comment is essentially a troll.
That Anonymous Coward guy is pretty annoying. Can we have the government censor him or something?
Lamest Post
That whole paragraph looks like it was run through Google Translate, it's kind of silly to pick it apart line by line.
I'd assume the sentence you quote meant there won't be problems including drivers as new models are released or in various distributions that have different policies about non-GPL binaries.
One of the biggest problems I faced was using a LiveCD to show off Linux.
"Here, boot with this and check it out!"
"Eh, kinda neat lookin'. How do I get online?"
"Well, hook your laptop to the router for a bit, or download some stuff onto a flash drive with another computer. Then you have to figure out exactly what model of wireless card you have and follow these arcane steps. No, it's easy, but you have to download these tools, too, to split the Windows driver files in... Wait, why are you booting back into Windows?"
It's really difficult to convince someone that Linux is as easy to use as Windows (in general, day to day work) when their first experience is struggling to make such basic things work.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
/facepalm
The only real difference between the open source driver and a proprietary one is the project manager behind it. Company X releases a driver for device Y and it is working slowly, eats memory like mad and crashes when the load is high, but it does function. It comes back to the project manager to decide "do I care enough to ask upper management to give me money to fix these issues?" and "if I do ask will upper management care?". The answer to both of these questions will likely be "NO!", reason being if you speak to upper management and tell them the current implementation works but lacks in these cases, a small percentage of the user base is unhappy, management will likely say it's fine the way it is get back to work on the next greatest thing. Open source is driven on making the end user happy so while it still takes the same if not more time to get to the same goals overall the project stays open and progresses adding more features and fixing bugs continuously until reports disappear.
;)
That is why Open Source is not magic but it is not run by people who don't know what is going on either
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
> But apparantly all the 12 year olds with Ubuntu has mod points today, and I probably offended their religion. You really can't understand why you're getting modded down? That comment is essentially a troll.
He understands it in terms of "it's always someone else's fault". That isn't really something you can fix despite how easy it is to demonstrate that it's wrong and a puerile way to look at things.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Just do a quick search for rt2x00 bugs, they've been open sourced a long time, and still has plenty of bugs and failures. It's not magic, it wont' make all problems go away. Yet, that's what the claim is.
Well yes if the released source is crap and the documentation is equally crap so you can't figure out how to fix it then GIGO it is. But Linux doesn't have the luxury of being prioritized as highly as Windows or Mac except for server components, I would say in 99% of the cases open source is better than closed source. Then at least you can fix obvious logic errors or overflows that you don't need chip documentation to understand. This is one big step closer to installing Linux and having it all Just Work(tm). That's actually the biggest advantage of in-kernel open source drivers, nothing as annoying as having to drag out a cable to get online for updates and troubleshooting. Almost anything else can be fixed as long as you get online...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Wireless, for the most part, works very well under Linux. If you were unable to get the linux version to work you could always use the windows version via ndiswrapper.
In the past year alone I have seen a significantly reduced instance of wireless driver issues as the open source community has worked out so many of the problems. Though, you had to install them after you installed the distribution--you were told there were proprietary hardware drivers available (automatically). You needed only a couple clicks and a reboot to make them work.
This provides a way to have wireless work without the need to be prompted for proprietary drivers and the reboot.
If there was a reason to complain, and there was about 2 year ago, wireless is where it was at. Linux didn't bring joy all the time, especially in certain HP laptops. Even so, it seems every week I have to deal with issues with a customer's wireless device under Windows XP, Vista, or Win7 (though not as often under Win7). It isn't a joy to work with them under Windows either.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
The only reason ultra-cheap Chinese clones of Broadcom hardware aren't common today is because the lack of documentation. Anyone can tear the hardware apart and see what chips they are using and even, with an electron microscope, reverse-engineer a custom chip. But without the drivers and/or documentation there is no value in the hardware alone.
Now, with the complete documentation (the drivers are the documentation), there is no reason for anyone to spend more on Broadcom devices when they can just as easily just much cheaper clones. This will be a net win for manufacturers who will reap greater profits while not passing the savings along to customers. It pretty much means the end for Broadcom because they can't possibly compete with the clone makers.
I am actually acquainted with a guy that works for Broadcom. I remember he and I, at a gathering a few months ago, having a very heated discussion about the state of their wireless drivers for Linux. More like me ranting to him. He said that they have a team of programmers that put out their Linux drivers and bla bla bla ( I pretty intoxicated). I was bitching because the only distro that worked out of the box, for me anyways, was Ubuntu. I know he's some sort of manager that works on the wireless card side of things. I wonder...
Thank you Broadcom! I've been waiting for this to finally happen. I will admit, I'm not happy with the present state of the 'wl' drivers, and this will at least create potential for others to improve on it. Thank you! :D [any chance of the bluetooth drivers too? I have one of the cheap dongles.... that needs *NIX support. :D]
Have Been Trolled :)
Due to some unfortunate attitudes/politics in the FOSS world, "Linux" is still only loosely defined as a desktop platform.
Without being defined more clearly with a platform spec -- including UI -- and an SDK to make app developers feel at home, the usability and fragility of the desktop-oriented features (*cough* sound *cough* graphics *cough*) will not much improve, nor will top-notch app developers feel more attracted to the amorphous non-platform.
Fortunately, that problem doesn't extend as much into the cellphone/PDA world, so a lot of progress is being made there. Google was not savagely attacked for 'taking away our UI freedom' when they started Android as an open-source project. Same thing for WebOS and others. Note that Android has an SDK and is relatively well-defined as a platform, and even the nut-less Linux Foundation now has an SDK for their mobile offering (something they won't do with the desktop).
And also note: Last I checked none of the desktop Linux-based distros had a platform spec or SDK either. My take on what went wrong is that the issue of creating a desktop Linux became politicized early-on by hackers and other CLI-jockeys when they held a lot more sway than they do now. So having a mandatory/standard GUI was seen as chaining users to something big and overly-complex that many hackers did not want. (My answer to that is, run a non-desktop distro if you want the GUI to be optional.)
Open source works mainly when the audience being served is programmers and system admins because these types are familiar with and appreciate tweaking to get something to work (and even then, only to a point). Projects that truly focus on end-users' needs are rare: Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Android and maybe a couple others. The rest are either very nuts-and-bolts, or they are nuts-and-bolts with a thick candy coating.
Then perhaps a hybrid kernel might be better: trusted drivers run in the monolithic core, while untrusted drivers run as user processes in a sort of microkernel. See FUSE for an example of this.
Who's "we all"? I haven't touched wpa_supplicant.conf for a long time. The two leading wireless configuration systems, NetworkManager and Wicd, both have GUIs making it very easy to connect. Any modern GUI distro will have one of them.
I see some inconsistency between your sig and comment...
Wow. Exactly the opposite exerience from mine. My corporate Windows laptop has three different network management apps -- I have no idea why -- and a separate VPN app. None of those seem simple, and whenever I have to use Windows I'm a little lost with them. In linux I have Networkmanager that does everything networking related.
Keep in mind that Broadcom wireless chipsets are used in a staggering number of linux-based embedded devices, such as the venerable WRT54G.
Unfortunately I have had wireless drivers (ath5k/ath9k + hostapd) cause a kernel panic, although after completely rebuilding the server after the 3 years it had been in service fixed the issue, so it may have been a bad link to a system library. (Yes, I mean both ath5k and ath9k had the issue, I installed a newer wireless N card to see if it was a hardware issue, it made the kernel panic as well)
Geeks don't grock information, they grep it.
Yall can kiss my ass foreva!
Parent is absolutely correct.
Looks like some folks with mod points are abusing them by downmodding people they don't agree with.
hmm .. I still have to see a driver for any wireless card that crashes linux. Worst case scenario, it just doesn't work, which was incidentally the problem I had with my broadcom adapter on an Acer Aspire One D250. but crash the OS? not really, no.
I guess I was fortunate: every distro I've tried on my Thinkpad R40 has worked right out of the box. Then again, Thinkpads were always pretty Linux friendly.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I see some inconsistency between your sig and comment...
Shhhh! Be careful, or the conflict may cause a breakdown in his positronic brain..
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
(And no, this comment isn't Insightful or anything else; actually I probably HBT).
This is Slashdot. Has Big Tits.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
As a counterpoint, I found it dead easy with Ubuntu Netbook Remix on an Asus 701. It was about as many clicks and menus as it takes on OS X and WinXP. Now a given distribution may not always make it that easy for you but this should basically be solved for the distros intended for desktop use.
I agree. I found Ubuntu and also OpenSUSE both pretty painless on my Thinkpad. The only problem I had with either of them was that they wouldn't control the CPU fan (but that's a known issue with this model's embedded controller firmware.)
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
And before I drop any cash on a stand-alone network monitor, I will at least consider simply buying a card that has a legit driver.
That might work for desktop PCs. But once you've bought USB dongles to replace your laptop's Linux-incompatible internal hardware, you'll need a hub to plug them all in, and then you'll need a case to carry the dongles and the hub.
...having not RTFA is that this only applies to their LATEST 802.11N based chipsets. IE all us schmucks with older a/b/g cards are still SOL, although hopefully the drivers can be backported to utilize older firmware images to allow better interoperation.
Honestly I've got a 4ish year old Compaq with a broadcom chipset in it (43xx, don't remember model, but not the 4313 listed.) and while the open source effort to support the chips was iffy, the closed source driver ubuntu has been supporting for a while has worked wonders on that laptop.
Here's hoping the open source drivers do the same, for what chipsets they DO support.
Exactly. The Nokia N900 springs to mind. Nokia essentially abandoned it (to "community support") when they moved to their new OS (meego), citing the N900's closed hardware as something they couldn't support 100% going forward with a new, fully open OS. It'll be interesting to see if they change their tune now that broadcom drivers are open. I doubt there's much else in an n900 that's closed hardware, given that it IS linux, most drivers tend to be open source for it, and that much of the functionality is in the main mobile CPU chip (OMAP3?), which is well known (and, I believe, open).
Except that having to use ndiswrapper sucks, it's a kludgy workaround, this is a nice native solution that is a real fix.
Not so much. I've been quite happy using my Toshibas. The ath5k in my A105 and the rtl8192e in my A505D have served quite nicely. For the short period I had the HP (from Oct. 07 till Jan 08) I used NDISWrapper without too much hassle. That, and my sig also references my Desktop, all of which I've never had major driver issues. NDISWrapper took a whole 30 minutes to figure out. Considering that the rest of everything worked fairly smoothly (including fglrx), certainly closer to "Just works" then Windows ever came as far as driver installations go.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
Please, when talking about what someone said, a personal blog link or a link to a journalists entry of some sort displaying the quote. When talking about government / military things, please make sure "proof" links end either in .gov or .mil and nothing else. The above link, talks about Broadcom (who has their own website) open sourcing some of their linux device drivers, yet the link takes you to OS News, which also has another link.
Now, this isn't to challenge the post itself, just how slashdot entries tend to always do this sort of thing.
"Steve Jobs announces new device!!!! HERE"S PROOF 'link to macrumors, ars technica, bbc tech news, Times or something other than apple.com'" please start providing real links my fellow members of slashdot.
A lot (but not all) of wireless cards are usually embedded ARM processors with a radio glued on. The operating system driver just talks to the firmware, and the firmware does most of the heavy lifting. Some cards store firmware in flash, but some store it in RAM and it has to be uploaded from the host computer every time the device is reset.
Does anyone know whether these chipsets do require firmware, and if so whether it's included in the source release?
We have them now? Awesomeness.
I'm starting to think GNU is the problem with "GNU/Linux" these days.
This is a little late for anyone to cheer them. They should have done this 4 years ago.
Instances of Porcine Flyers and the current temp in Hell is -50 and dropping fast after an accidental release of Nitrous Oxide affected the Thermostats.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
Is this a bug in phy/wlc_phy_cmn.c? Channel 216 doesn't follow the pattern set forth above it -- or is channel 216 really at presumably 50.8GHz instead of 5.08GHz?
I'm 33 years old running openSUSE. I would have modded you down. The way you say things does matter.
It sounds as if you were on a rant against open source instead of a rant about how the article is clearly wrong. There's no such thing as flawless drivers (which has nothing to do with source availability and licensing).
Even if I didn't mod you down at first, I would have modded you down later because of the way you're carrying on. Calling moderators "12 year olds" and implying that only Ubuntu has something to do with that demographic certainly won't get you much respect.
I've modded people down, who were completely on the mark, because they ended their remarks with name calling. You don't have to be diplomatic, but that's not an excuse to be outright antisocial. (People would do well to ask themselves if their post encourages discussion or weather it encourages name calling.)
There's a lot of truth in the troll moderations you have received.
Bingo baby, bingo.
We have them now? Awesomeness.
Yes, and not only do they run Linux but they're open-source and use Broadcom chipsets.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Personally, I use easy peasy on my eeepc 900. It works well, it's a shame that Asus couldn't have chosen them as the default. Although, the Ubuntu netbook remix is not bad at all either. Really it's better than the Xandros copy they included complete with broken repositories.
As opposed to Linux users that never get the chance?
Two words: Creative Labs
at least, as the drivers are open sourced : .ko code - sometimes manually)
- a bigger number of distributions can ship them as standard packages. (not all distribution can ship binary drivers, some time due to plain stupid copyright problems)
- such driver are easier to update (if the kernel versions increases, the distribution provides an adapted package, whereas with proprietary, the user has to recompile the glue
- in case of newer distribution,the distro makers are free to adapt and compile a newer package of the driver. (with proprietary they would depend on the company providing a newer driver, and the company may lag behind, because they prioritise windows)
- in case of bugs or exploit, at least the linux world has a possibility to fix the problems. Whereas with proprietary, one has to wait until the company provides a fix - which could suffer from delay, specially if the hardware is old and the company has no economic incentive to keep supporting it.
so indeed "open source" isn't some magic pixie dust that will make all problems go away. On the other hand, it will increase the availability and gives more means to correct said problems apart from "wait for the company to fix it".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
usb_modeswitch.....
ok, so not branded 'wi-fi', but mobile broadband.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You're not being clever. You're being a prick and adding nothing of value to the discussion.
Ndiswrapper is just like any other GUI based app. You download the drivers extract them, and then the rest is point and click.
I'm really getting tired of hearing things like this from people that have no idea what they are talking about.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
It doesn't guarantee that the driver will run the device properly, but it does guarantee that the driver won't crash the OS.
I don't see how thats possible. My understanding of a bus master DMA based system (e.g. pretty much any PCI or PCIe based system) is that part of "running the device" is telling the device where to DMA to.
When devices can easilly crash the system without help from a driver it seems unlikely any driver verifier could prevent a driver intentionally or unintentionally crashing the system.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
No platform? What about the Linux Standard Base?
A backport makes more sense than waiting 6 months
atheros chipset drivers have had open source drivers for sometime which is why I choose atheros chipsets for my network needs.
I wrote an email to TP-link telling them this and they wrote me back thanking me.
The good thing for TP-Link is that they dont have to make linux drivers they just make products
that support the existing atheros drivers.
This explains why the HD2 running Froyo 2.2 suddenly got fully working Broadcom WiFi drivers dropped into the git tree a couple of weeks ago.
http://git.linuxtogo.org/?p=groups/mobile-linux/kernel.git;a=commit;h=26c66976c838c956c7b003cec8fd96c7cdac4026
These are the same drivers we've been repeatedly told are a firing offense if we accidentally release them to customers?
WTF, just WTF.
Clearly he should be modded up. He points out that Ubuntu is so easy a 12 year old can operate it. +5 informative! Talk about a win for Linux on the Desktop!!!!!
Move over Apple and Microsoft! Time to get Linux in the schools.
Ugh... I've had nothing but trouble with my Soundblaster Cards for years now.
Let me ask sincerely: If one wants decent audio quality (not "audiophile" but better than on-board), what's a good, Linux-friendly alternative?
LSB doesn't define the desktop environment, nor other features like app installation interfaces (both UI and programmatic). People get lost (or even if they don't, they tend to FEEL a bit lost) without such features.
No one can write a guideline for copying/moving app data files (say, photos) or making basic configuration changes using the LSB as a guide. Nor can they write instructions for installing software (defining the package format as LSB does is not enough).
Mark Shuttleworth is also right to say that LSB doesn't properly handle the question of revision numbers for all the different components in the OS: There isn't enough synchronization. Sadly though, he seems to miss all the other points I brought up and instead of bringing in high-level design people he's got his team aping the look of Mac OS X.
The whole concept of "Linux" as a desktop platform is empty, a sort of mass delusion among hackers. Linux is just a kernel. Yet people write apps on Ubuntu expecting them to work on Mandriva and Fedora too. The same thing doesn't occur with Linux-based mobile platforms: Who writes an app for Android (which BTW does not have "Linux" in the title) and expects it to run on WebOS and Meego??
Android is a full OS platform, one that benefits from being paired with complete hardware builds by the mfg. with some help from Google. The desktop "Linux" morass has no such dynamic, making it an inferior choice for most non-hackers and I dare say even most techies.
Context is important. It's obvious the submitter is talking about problems with distribution, not software bugs.
You're a troll because you quoted out of context..
Your quote..
Full quote..
It was obviously about distribution problems however you misquoted and made a strawman out of the issue, hence why you've been modded troll.
2) Being verifiably honest is a competitive advantage.
Question 1: My hard disk can sustain between 30MB/sec to 80MB/sec sequential transfer, while my competitor's can sustain up to 286MB/sec. Which will you buy?
Question 2: My laser printer can sustain 1.5 ppm, while my competitor's up to 10 ppm. Which to recommend?
----
Hint 1: 286MB/sec is the upper limit for SATA 2.
Hint 2: "My" measurements are inclusive of "cooling breaks between prints" during high volume prints, and includes a medium-resolution graphic (30MB size perhaps).
How do you download drivers if your wifi isn't working? It's a kludgy workaround compared having a proper driver that works from the live CD.
This is real proof of correctness
Proof? Really? Someone should tell Turing!
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
First you say that Linux is too hard for developers, then you say that it works well for developers but not for end users.
Apart from sound (and that is not too hard a problem, given everyone uses Pulseaudio these days, and it can play ALSA and OSS stuff if the distro configures it correctly, and ALSA can also emulate OSS), I have never heard either developers or end users complain.
6. It would mean we'd have to clean up our code.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
For the WiFi Broadcom has had working closed source drivers for a very long time. One of my machines is a Lenovo S10e which I bought in March 2009, defenestrated it and installed Debian day one. It has been using the closed source Linux driver from Broadcom website. The original 2009 release had some problems with WPA which they fixed. After that it just worked - hibernate, resume, everything.
As pointed elsewhere on this thread Broadcom is every second wireless enabled embedded device with Linux. So its closed source driver gets some very heavy testing on a variety of CPUs and architectures. As a result it is of very reasonable quality. If they have forked this closed source one or have released a parallel development open source one I would not be so sure that it will achieve higher code quality because it will be getting LESS eyeballs, not more. I guess I need to have a look at what exactly did they opensource here.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
AFAIK they still haven't released the driver for interfacing with the battery to charge it... the stock reason was that they were afraid people would blow up their batteries.
Now public safety is a lofty goal, but honestly if Nokia wants more people to believe in their commitment to an open future, and wants them to jump on the MeeGo train, they're really going to have to make some big gestures, and a push to open all they can on the n900 would really be a good start.
What's the next gen of hardware? The N9 is it? Heck, better than the N9, if Nokia really wants to show off they could try to get 100% open drivers there. It'll be tough/impossible if they go with an Imagination GPU (so I think that would rule out OMAP), so maybe it'd be everything but the GPU.
coding is life
I (not the original poster) make six figures a year. I buy a lot of gear. I own my own house (etc) and I select strongly against companies that do not open source their specs and drivers. Granted I cannot avoid such things completely. But I do try and I do substantially succeed.
I work in defense contracting. My projects substantially select against hardware that doesn't open source their drivers. Granted they do not avoid such things completely, but they do dry and substantially succeed.
See the pattern?
In both cases this is rampant self interest. And why shouldn't it be? Both options cost the same, the open sourced (or open source compatible) option works just as well, but in one I have more options and choices and it cost the company nothing and profited them my business.
Closed source code is a freak outcome of the 1980's PC culture as fostered by MS. For decades before that all software came with source. Heck, the original PC Technical Manual contained a printout of the BIOS for the IBM PC.
"Closed Source" information theory died in the renaissance, it came back for a bit these last twenty years, but it is just a blip.
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Do you think this has anything to do with HTC and their Android phones not having WiFi N for a while, and maybe even the long times that OEMs take to update Android versions? If OEMs want open-source drivers to speed along the process and have full access to hardware then that could be a big reason to push companies to open-source their drivers. That's my educated guess, HTC made them do it.
If one wants decent audio quality (not "audiophile" but better than on-board), what's a good, Linux-friendly alternative?
I don't know if this is too expensive for you, but I bought a NuForce uDAC a month ago. It works perfectly in Ubuntu 10.04, it' very convenient and robustly built, it sounds great with my Sennheiser HD 600s headphones, and it can also be connected to a bigger amplifier to drive ordinary speakers.
The model I have:
http://www.nuforce.com/hp/products/iconudac/
A newer version of the same:
http://www.nuforce.com/hp/products/iconudac2/
Good point.
I've already replied so I can't mod you up.
I think it might be enough to be able to not include the firmware in the repositories, but to dynamically download the firmware from a specified FTP site and then apply it.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
My Dell Studio is incompatible with Linux, XP, Windows 7 (functional only), while Vista is incompatible with itself and unusable.
I'm setting my hopes for Windows though, since Linux Broadcom drivers didn't work properly in any distribution, using any methods.
This is a good move, but too late for me.
Lesson learned: Don't buy Dell ever, ever, ever again. Not Apple either.. Certainly not Sony. Anyone else?
Finally. WiFi support for Linux.
Ben Acheson
Thank you Broadcom!!!
I think it might be enough to be able to not include the firmware in the repositories, but to dynamically download the firmware from a specified FTP site and then apply it.
But what about people installing off a usb thumbdrive on a system with a wireless card but no ethernet jack (or at least no ethernet cable handy) ?
The real solution here is to open the firmware. I'm no expert here, but I believe that the current atheros chips have both open drivers and open firmware. So you don't have any distribution, linking, derivative work, etc... issues.
To sum up:
- Kudos to Broadcom. We didn't think you'd do this in 2010!
- Dear Broadcom, please consider releasing the firmware as well (and drivers/firmware for older models...we're still using them!)
- Dear Users, please consider how open broadcom and atheros chipsets are when you buy stuff!
coding is life
see Linus Torvalds' quote about the number of eyeballs
Just in case people start to forget it, this is called "Linus' Law" and Linus Torvalds had nothing to do with it. It was coined by Eric Raymond and can be found in his book "the Cathedral and the Bazaar".
AC
The key problem is firmware updates are not included in linux drivers due to legal reasons
What law? What about the ath9k stuff from Atheros. AFAIK they're funding that work and the firmware is as open as an unpatched windows machine...
it's not too difficult to reverse engineer that part from windows drivers
Sure, but it's probably much easier to just write the firmware when you have the spec in hand! Also, how legal is it to reverse-engineer the windows drivers? I know that the rules are often different across the pond...
coding is life
Five years ago, my company budgeted for the purchase of several dozen printers at a cost of over $4000.00...having just migrated to Linux, I had the task of researching the most productive printers for the Linux environment. I was told to "lean" toward Canon printers. Like that was going to happen. I took the time to write to Canon and tell them that we would not be purchasing their product due to their lack of support for Linux. You can see a copy of their response here half way down the page here: http://linux-blog.org/more-printer-mayhem/ Canon may have, by now, released drivers for Linux. I could care less. They were not available for me when I needed them. HP and Samsung were and still are and any printer purchases we make will be through those companies. I wonder at how many decision-makers have done the same.
Windows assumes you are an idiot...Linux demands proof.
...defenestrated it...
That must be one tough PC to survive being thrown out of a window.
You did the inverse - you threw Windows out of _it_.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Yes, it works well for enthusiast system developers. It's awful for app developers. I should have been more clear on those points.
Or putting it another way, if you're scratching your own itch as a developer, your contribution will be valuable to other devs and perhaps sysadmins too. But if you're thinking about typical end-users as your target, then "desktop Linux" doesn't look appealing at all. This is especially true if you want to distribute commercially as you would have to support DISTROS x VERSIONS number of OS variations, not to mention that the system won't quite treat your app as normal software because the package-handling assumptions revolve around the idea that all software comes through free repositories.
Audio is still a mess, less so on the blocking/mixing issue, but still having problems with hardware support: One OEM can wire outputs very differently from another even given the same audio chip meaning that reasonable defaults are a game of chance... you can install Ubuntu and get L-R front speakers on your surrounds, headphones, or some lines that didn't get a jack connected to them on that computer.
And audio can still disappear without a trace after system updates... much the same case as with X11 video disappearing (it still does this on many systems even with minor settings changes).
AND THEN there is the problem with large OEMs like Dell taking widely-available chips for which Linux drivers exist, and asking the mfg. to knock a few dollars off. My experience has been that Linux drivers often work with these variations, but not well.
Finally. Hours of my life have been wasted trying to get Broadcom drivers to work in the past - no more.
Tagged TLBs are only available on the latest AMD and Intel CPUs. You need those, trust me. (The TLB)
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Hey, not to expensive. I've generally spent nearly that every time I bought a new Audigy for the past 10 years.
Most drivers under Ubuntu/Linux don't need to be installed. It just works. It isn't like Windows.
To address your question, I would reply that you do it the same way you do it in Windows. Connect up the wired port or use a second machine.
In the case that the drivers aren't there you often, in the case of Ubuntu, are prompted telling you that you have proprietary drivers available. At that point you can just click a few buttons and have them installed. They will automatically be downloaded and installed.
If there are none, which is exceptionally rare, then you can get the windows driver, extract them, and use the tool provided with ndiswrapper to install them by pointing to the folder where the drivers are located, select your driver, and go from there. The tool has a graphical UI and is exceptionally easy.
But, that's only useful about 1/2 the time. When you consider the vast number of installs already covered the failed percentage isn't bad. Under Windows I have had the same issue where drivers weren't available. In fact, on a current unit I'm working on there are no SiS drivers for video for Win7. To get the wired drivers working I had to use XP drivers to start, which isn't always a good idea.
In the past when there was a large number of people that wanted to go from Vista to XP the computer manufacturer often wouldn't provide XP drivers. That meant that you had to have some pretty expansive knowledge of computers to know to go looking for models, even from other manufacturers that provided XP drivers for the chip-sets governing the device you wanted drivers for and to download those from them. Often you had to look far and wide, and you had to have the knowledge to identify the chip-sets because you weren't given this information by XP. To help you could always boot from an Ubuntu live CD, open a terminal prompt and type "lspci" (without the quotes). Then write down the components and look for the appropriate driver as described above.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
and there are already proprietary drivers for RHEL.
You haven't read many game development threads then.
This is the year of the Linux smartphone and kitchen appliance.
You've written all this and failed to address the point at hand.
You state Ubuntu is point, click to download and install the drivers failing to address my point about how you do that when you can not connect to the internet via wifi.
You make the comparison that ndiswrapper is no better then windows. Great, but I don't care about windows and their failures. Just because it's no better then windows doesn't absolve it from being mess. Drivers in the kernel are a much better solution.
Not only has it NOT been a problem for years...device drivers in Linux...there are literally more device drivers for linux than ANY operating system in the history of computers.
The problems with proprietary hardware are easy to avoid...don't purchase proprietary hardware, ever.
Two great sources for PC hardware that will run anything are ZaReason and System 76. Avoid any company that is stupid enough to pay a Microsoft Tax (can you say LinPro as they use hardware that is rigged to only work with Microsoft Windows and break under Linux.) as they are using hardware that will not work readily with all Linux distros.
You can even install Windows on them if you want, but all the hardware is configured knowing from day 1 that it will run under Linux. If the hardware will not run under Linux, it is not used...problem solved.
To add an additional layer of security, learn about hardware, and for any company that ships hardware that will not work with Linux and refuse to immediately fix it or provide information so others can fix it...do not buy any hardware or software from them for a minimum of 7 years since the last "Linux-Show-Stopper" event. If we all did that, no company would dare release BS hardware that does not work with Linux on day 1, as they would lose your business for 7 years, with the clock getting restarted at each new occurrence.
Thus their words NO LONGER MATTER, only their actions! If after 7 years of good behavior, once again add them to your list of bonafide companies to do business with. For definition of bonafide, see O Brother, Where Art Thou (2000)
Is your Internet Throttled? Install DD-Wrt, OpenWRT or Tomato to learn the truth! Google: 1Gbps/1Gbps: 5 Communities
Except half of the time it doesn't actually work. Not to mention you can forget about putting your laptop to sleep and reconnecting the wireless when (if!) it wakes back up.
I'm really getting tired of hearing things like this from people that have no idea what they are talking about.
You say there are no SDK to make app developers feel at home for the "desktop-platform"
but there are, and even quite a few well defined ones, however that has nothing to do with
low-level support of hardware that has to go through the kernel.
The thing is with the Desktop Platform the hardware specs are usually very versatile, in the
embedded device platform you have X spec for X model and Y spec for model Y.
I'd love to see the SDK that will enable developers making kernel "plugins" or others things
for the Android platform you mention however anything the SDK enables is the VM enviroment
where the software has to request hardware access and still let the VM handle that.
To give my 10 bits, for an SDK for the Desktop, whether UI or other, I am very fond of the Qt
one, it has a good deal of everything (sound, UI & DB) however GTK+ as UI is very well defined
also.