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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.
Looking forward to much broader DD-WRT support for Broadcom hardware in the near future
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
They've had a binary driver out for some time, I'm using broadcom-sta on my IdeaPad.
-- Linux user #369862
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.
Well to be fair most open source "just works".
It's whether it "just works" well that's the big question.-
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, these drivers require firmware. No, this release does not include source for the firmware. You still need to have the binary blob from Broadcom to make the drivers work.