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Atheros Wi-Fi goes open-source, Linux friendly

blogs.computerworld.com — At long last, Atheros has opened up the last binary barriers to making completely open-source, Linux-friendly drivers for its popular Wi-Fi chipsets.

Who dugg this? Made popular Dec 1, 2008

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  • alterImperson, on 12/01/2008, -1/+125Sweet... Broadcom next please.
  • yensed, on 12/01/2008, -7/+95Atheros>>Broadcom
  • aerion, on 12/01/2008, -2/+64Come on, Nvidia, what are you waiting for?!
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -0/+45If only sound card makers did the same, I know creative did but for how long is anyones guess.

    Ubuntu Studio is an awesome media creation system.
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -3/+30Atheros bit shift right Broadcom?

    That doesn't make any sense...
  • yetAnotherCroc, on 12/01/2008, -3/+27They are not open source. But they do have fully functional drivers for linux now.
  • Zippo, on 12/01/2008, -2/+24Open source just makes everything better.
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -2/+22finally... now we can get some drivers for WEP crackin on the chipsets that Omnipeak didn't support :)
  • mithrasinvictus, on 12/01/2008, -1/+19Intel had support long before either of these.
  • lonewalker, on 12/01/2008, -0/+16yes normal people still do, some dont use anything at all
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -0/+14people still use WEP?
  • smotpoker, on 12/01/2008, -3/+15The biggest inaccurate/subjective/outdated complaint at least :P.

    (Dugg to mitigate buries that, based on objective analysis of your comment, are unjust IMO)
  • adt41287, on 12/01/2008, -0/+12this is pretty awesome. the only thing i can not stand about my Acer Aspire One is that the leds do not work at all.... yet.
  • GOVATENT, on 12/01/2008, -2/+14***** broadcom. HP seems to have a devils agreement with them. Like 80 percent of HP computers contain broadcom. As I only use linux, I am sick of dealing with their cards. Plus, I have some other things I like to do I can't do with broadcom cards. Broadcom should just die. Yes I know, as a linux user its not hard at all to get any wifi card working, but atheros just is much nicer to work with in linux. (Plus to use monitor mode :) )
  • pgadeb, on 12/01/2008, -0/+11great progress..hope it's a trend
  • cheeseplease, on 12/01/2008, -0/+11It seems to me more and more hardware vendors build linux drivers nowadays. If this is indeed the case, this is a very very good development.
  • jamesdew, on 12/01/2008, -0/+10YAY!
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -2/+12Nah. They are too busy snorting coke off of a hookers ass.
  • black27696, on 12/01/2008, -0/+9@cheese, in C++ you would need the ==, x=y would store y in x, and depending on the if statement it would always come back as true because that's like asking if y=y since you're storing y in x in the first place. I'm not agreeing with the >>, I'm just waving my C flag.
  • abadonn, on 12/01/2008, -1/+10Finally, I'm sick of having to download a weird driver from a Hungarian site every time I reinstall Ubuntu.
  • MJG2007, on 12/01/2008, -0/+9Excellent. Jumping through hoops to get madwifi or ndiswrapper to get these cards to work is not fun.
  • sliksta, on 12/01/2008, -1/+9About damn time.
  • TommyTikal, on 12/01/2008, -0/+8It's not that easy.

    I'd rather buy the best product for my dollar...then put open source apps on it. I'm not going to limit my options when choosing hardware.

    For my laptop I chose the MSI VR-601 with no OS. Great Linux support for everything except the Atheros Wifi. Playing with ndiswrapper fixed that in short order.
  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -2/+10If only Broadcom would fall in line...
  • bballbackus, on 12/01/2008, -1/+8Yes, open source ftw. :D
  • chris062689, on 12/01/2008, -0/+7The drivers from what I hear are a bit behind Windows in performance.
    OpenSource nvidia would be nice, but I believe there's "nonoffical" nvidia open source drivers.
  • Genma, on 12/01/2008, -0/+7egg, meet chicken. it's a start.
  • jmantra, on 12/01/2008, -0/+7"Then what will happen? You will be happy?
    They have closed source drivers -> ***** them.
    If you buy their products it's your fault.
    Not theirs, not Linux or GNU, it's only your fault."


    This is the attitude that keeps linux from going mainstream.
  • cheeseplease, on 12/01/2008, -0/+6Because we want to use free internet at home and not a block from home.
  • habbofresh, on 12/01/2008, -0/+5Yes.

    I rescued my old access-point from the trash for use because:

    1. I refuse to buy a TiVo-only USB WiFi adapter. without which my series 2 TiVo won't do WPA.
    2. Nintendo DS.

    and since it's on a separate vlan my other WPA protected LAN is relatively safer than reducing the whole thing to WEP altogether.
  • joshualamgroup, on 12/01/2008, -2/+7so? anyone can easily break into WPA too.
  • secrity, on 12/01/2008, -0/+5I believe that the kernel in Ubuntu 8.10 has the ath9k drivers
  • jacekpoplawski, on 12/01/2008, -2/+7You should buy products with Open Source drivers instead asking for open drivers (forever).
    Vote with your wallet. Don't buy hardware without open drivers. Simple.
  • InorganicMatter, on 12/01/2008, -4/+9Wait for what? NVIDIA has the best Linux drivers of any hardware maker out there.
  • djangoxl, on 12/01/2008, -1/+6Wow, this is good news, so I can safely purchase a (d-link) router with atheros chipset and have it power my fully open source network!
    Thanks Atheros.
  • mrsteveman1, on 12/01/2008, -0/+5It is unavoidable sometimes, stuff comes with broadcom chipsets, users shouldn't have to base entire purchasing decisions around that one single issue.

    The only solution is to shame broadcom into either opening their drivers, or releasing one. They've done the latter already, the former might take time.
  • mrsteveman1, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4No, the biggest complaint i have would be that some of the drivers aren't feature complete, and that some of the control apps aren't very good.
  • zerodaysoon, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4thanks dudes!!! :-)
  • jtwyrrpirate, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4It's because you are compiling the driver from source ("make" and "sudo make install"). You will have to re-compile that driver with every kernel update, because when you update, you are left with a driver that was compiled for your old kernel instead of your new, updated kernel.

    EDIT: Yea, what vuke said ;-p
  • tk0680, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4Actually the vast majority of wireless chipsets work just fine without any "hacky workarounds" at all. The reason that this is such big news is because Atheros is (was) one of the last two major chipset producers to really open up.
  • tk0680, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4Cutting your nose to spite your face isn't the most practical way forward.

    While yes, you end up using what you buy, you can't deny it'd be bloody helpful if Broadcom pulled its thumb out of its arse.
  • vuke69, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4Kernel modules always need to be compiled against specific kernel headers. So when you upgrade your kernel, you need to recompile the module as well.
  • crunchdigg, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4I got a list of 802.11n cards here

    http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k# ...

    fedora 10 has the ath9k drivers built in. it found and uses my card. woo HOO.

  • inactive, on 12/01/2008, -0/+4Its not that easy with WPA. WEP is a freaking 5 minute job with a proper Artheros or Ralink card. WPA takes quite a bit of time. Also WPA2 is what i use.
  • mithrasinvictus, on 12/01/2008, -1/+4I'll never make that mistake again.
  • mrsteveman1, on 12/01/2008, -2/+5The bar is pretty low on that one.......
  • zerodaysoon, on 12/01/2008, -0/+3sweet!!! finally, if anyone still cant install the ath5k drivers go here for instructions: http://www.ubuntugeek.com/atheros-ar5007-wireless- ...

    it will tell u that u need to download new drivers in teh folder it creates follow the link and download the new drivers, and follow the same steps in the article, it helped me a lot!!

    does anyone know why i have to keep reinstalling my wifi drivers when there's a new kernel update? thanks
  • kiwi2008, on 12/01/2008, -0/+3why bother?

    there are so many unsecured networks here - you only have to wardrive a block before you can get yourself online.
  • talkingwires, on 12/01/2008, -0/+3Their motives may not be entirely selfless. Moving to Open Source could mean free developers means less cost. I imagine the low-level code is OS agnostic, and it's just the hooks they tie into the OS that have to be changed. Having open source programmers fixing bugs in the low-level code could save them quite a bit of cash.

    Personally, I've always stuck with Intel chipsets as I didn't want to be bothered reinstalling a binary blob each time I update the kernel.
  • Bicep, on 12/02/2008, -0/+3Here's the contact page for Broadcom, let them know:
    http://www.broadcom.com/contact/
    Feedback page:
    http://www.broadcom.com/contact/feedback.php
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