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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."
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?
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.
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
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
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.
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
To the Broadcom team and everyone else who made this happen: you have my heartfelt thanks.
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.
I found it here:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git;a=commit;h=a9533e7ea3c410fed2f4cd8b3e1e213e48529b75
Looks like MIT/BSD style license.
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.
Ubuntu has been able to install the propietary drivers automatically for a long time now.
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.
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
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.
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.
Keep in mind that Broadcom wireless chipsets are used in a staggering number of linux-based embedded devices, such as the venerable WRT54G.
(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.
If that was true then Atheros should have gone by now. They open sourced their drivers almost a decade ago, yet they are still around. In fact, due to the excellent Linux support, I've only been buying and recommending to others the Atheros chipset WiFi cards. Not to mention all the extra abilities it gained from the OS community (like the ability to simultaneously act as an AP and client, which brought about mesh networking and community wifi).
They probably gained a lot indirectly in the form of higher sales of hardware due to this, plus the reduction in costs because they didn't have to pay a dev team all this time.
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?
Your issues assume that someone can't look at the specs online for a model that is at the store. Most brick-and-mortar computer and electronics stores actually do have websites. You can even print out the specs and take the paper to the store with you. Most of this information even happens to be on the box or in the spec book at the store. Many stores even really do have Internet (or at least Intranet to their own site which has different pricing than the public Internet site, but that problem was uncovered years ago) access at the store for customers to look online at specs and prices.
If you're not dealing with Best Buy, Fry's, CompUSA, Electronics Superstore, Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, or some similarly large chain (all of which have specs and prices online for what they sell in the stores) and are not dealing with a mom-and-pop place with enough brains to have Internet access in their store, then why are you buying at that particular brick-and-mortar store?
Also, if you find a laptop model in a brick-and-mortar store that is popular enough to have an out-of-box running display for you to try, you should be really suspicious if you can't find that model online at the manufacturer's site or at least some other store's site.
I know laptops are less expensive (and sometimes actually cheaper, as in cheaper builds and materials) than they used to be, but it's still not a cheeseburger. If you're spending hundreds of dollars on something you'll be using for hours or tens of hours a week, perhaps it's worth more of your time to research than walking into the store and checking the key pitch and travel before buying.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.