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30 Comments
- iluvdrbonner, on 10/12/2007, -1/+25As a long time linux user, Wireless support is not nearly as bad as people say, especially with recent additions to the kernel. Intel has had good linux drivers for a while for a lot of there hardware, which has sure been convenient in my laptop. Now with the broadcomm drivers in the newer kernels I think almost all the major chipsets are available and in distributions like ubuntu, you often get out of box functionality.
In the past five years there has been so many additions that I think in a year or two the myth about wireless being a drawback could potentially be dispelled. But thats just my two cents. - schestowitz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+25No more "I got Ubuntu installed, but I can't get my Wi-fi to work without ndiswrapper". Good news. Maybe the "free drivers" initiative [1] is paying off.
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[1] Free Linux Driver Development! - http://www.kroah.com/log/2007/01/29/#free_drivers - bmartin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Wireless support is one of Linux's biggest drawbacks. It's good to see that more progress is being made.
If you're having a problem with yours, the Ubuntu forums are a great place to look. Even if you're not a Ubuntu user, the instructions usually contain steps that can be performed on any distribution. I recently got the infamous Belkin 7050 USB adapter working and posted the instructions for that adapter there.. - airmind, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Actually, Intel 3945ABG is already supported natively on Ubuntu for some time. Indeed ndiswrapper is a bit tricky for newbies, but it is probably the fastest solution.
What I would really like to see is other companies following Intel path in opening their drivers for Linux, instead of relying in reverse-engineering for Linux support. - hoorray, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8"and in distributions like ubuntu, you often get out of box functionality."
That's true. I've just played around with Feisty Fawn Herd3 on my laptop and had no problems with wireless support. Very promising. :-) - ltmon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6This particular chipset has been well supported on linux for a while. The big difference with this driver is that it doesn't require the closed-source regulatory daemon, containing "microcode" (whatever that is) instead. In fact a quick check of the code shows that it is largely the same as the current ipw3945 driver.
So in other words it's now fully open source, rather than requiring a binary blob as previously. - Giga, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I'm not entirely sure the OSx86 guys care about licencing...
- nukem996, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Intel's wireless drivers have always worked great. I've been using the native IPW2100 driver (for the 802.11b card) since it came out over three years ago.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4This card has worked for an age though you had to pull in restricted modules.
//edit - will be interesting to see the in kernel implementation though. The current system works very well and I will continue to use it free or not if the in kernel one doesn't work as well.// - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Still uses binary microcode anyway apparently, the only benefit is dumping the userland daemon but I don't have an instant aversion to all things userland like some in Linux land do (you can get away with some userland implementations provided they are the exception not the rule).
- kleepklop, on 05/01/2009, -2/+6SWEET! I'm sure this will help the OSX86 community help make their Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Driver!
http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=36976 - strabes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@bhalash: network-manager-gnome or knetworkmanager
- AmishRefugee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4OH SNAP, this was the only reason I don't have Ubuntu on my laptop
...so long windows, bitches... - hijinks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3this is good news.. and the broadcom guys are making steady progress into getting a native driver working also
- EricJD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Cool, my laptop has the PRO/Wireless 3945ABG :)
- strabes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Welcome, friend!!
- brundlefly76, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The 3945 is supported natively but the driver will not work without the non-oss firmware and intel wireless daemon, which can make for a needlessly frustrating install (um, I have the driver, why isnt it working?).
- jdong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1A lot of security engineers are concerned about a closed-source programming constantly running as root with an indeterminable amount of access to the system.
On the other hand, microcode (firmware), is loaded onto the device and only acts within the device. How it interacts with the kernel and system are clearly defined by the open source driver.
I am an owner of an ipw3945 and it has worked out-of-the-box in Ubuntu since Dapper. However, I'm still excited to hear about this new driver in the sense that it shows Intel does care (tm) about Open Source -- enough to rewrite an already mostly open-source driver to be fully open source based on the community's disapproval of binary regulatory daemons. - jdong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Regardless of licensing if they just use the ipw3945 driver as a reference ("spec") to reverse engineer an OSX86 driver, then it's not a derived work anymore and no licensing issues apply.
- DnasTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Excellent.
Although this driver works out-of-box for me with no problem (and if it didn't, it's just a matter of adding a daemon at startup), it sometimes doesn't suspend well and I have to restart it upon resume. Plus there's the nuisance of a pointless daemon.
Personally, I'd like for them to do away with the non-free bits altogether, but meh... the device and driver are working quite well for me, so it's not as bad as others... can't have everything in the world. Plus there are valid arguments about FCC regulation stuff... though I think that Intel should have just put that stuff into the card's actual firmware as they did with previous cards... relying on the driver for that kind of stuff is somewhat security-though-obscurity... and we all know how well that works....
(Interestingly, it seems that the "driver" is barely free in the first place, all it did was talk with the daemon and firmware, as the regulatory daemon and firmware did more than just manage FCC regulations, some of it was of the old trade secret paranoia junk. http://kerneltrap.org/node/6650 ) - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The driver would be combined into OpenDarwin I would assume. Not entirely sure what the OSX driver model is though.
- GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh I dislike closed source but there is a general aversion to anything userland. Different issues really.
I'm not a micro kernel fan (generic microkernels are absolutely nuts, even OSX runs a microkernel with one server) but a little bit of userland isn't all that harmful. - JockeTF, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Nice! I've always disliked that daemon as it (for some odd reason) froze my system if I ran it while having my WLAN switched off. It also slowed down my CPU clock frequency from 1,60 Ghz to 1,34 Ghz whenever I had it running.
- GarrettC, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1@bhalash
I agree. It's true Gnome Networking Manager and the KDE equivalent works, it still somehow feels like it lacks functionality in some parts (WEP/WPA, anyone?)
Don't even get me started on trying to get it work with MSCHAP and such. Argh! - GMorgan, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Are the licenses compatible. I'd always have driver code released under a BSD license in order to ensure compatibility with as many OSS systems as possible (at the very least a reference version, interesting stuff might go GPL).
- jimbo92107, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0People with new Centrino laptops will be very happy, as the 3945ABG is the usual wireless chip, until Intel starts putting their new draft-N wireless into laptops. I'll be upgrading to that ASAP on mine...gotta get my MIMO, baby!
- MikeyMoose, on 01/30/2009, -2/+1Why don't they call it a "BAG Driver"?
- Giga, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Why should they call it a "BAG Driver"?
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+0This is a constructive comment.
- bhalash, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2Driver support is good, but configuration for portable networking can still be a pain and a half - I believe that both the Fedora and Ubuntu projects have made this a priority to fix, huzzah.
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