What is Digg?103 Comments
- MCA2142, on 10/08/2008, -0/+27Good.
I am tired of tinkering with ndiswrapper each time.
Official drivers FTW - ThatsNotPudding, on 10/08/2008, -4/+22This is fabulous new -CARRIER LOST-
- SweetBearCub, on 10/08/2008, -0/+18For those who can't access the article (404 Error), here's the full text.
One of the most annoying experiences for any desktop Linux user is installing a Linux on a laptop, switching it on, and... discovering that the Wi-Fi chipset doesn't support Linux. That used to be a commonplace experience, but over the years it's gotten much better. Unless, of course, you were using a laptop with a Broadcom chipset; then, chances were, you were in for some trouble.
Other Wi-Fi chipset companies like Intel and Atheros have gotten with the program and do a reasonable job of supporting Linux. Atheros even recently went the extra mile and released the Atheros HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) for its 802.11abg chipsets under the ISC license. In July, Atheros had open-sourced its 802.11n driver under the same liberal license.
Broadcom, on the other hand, well Broadcom continues to be a pain. In all fairness, Broadcom has made some progress. In February 2007, Broadcom engineers showed up at the Linux Wireless Summit. Then, in the summer of 2007, Broadcom finally gave Linux some driver support for its NetXtreme, NetXtreme II, NetLink and 4401 product lines. In July of this year, Broadcom engineers at the Linux Foundation Summit told me that they'd be giving Linux more support.
Well, I'm still waiting for more direct support from Broadcom. In the meantime, though, some championship reverse-engineering has given us support for the Broadcom B43 chipsets starting in the Linux 2.6.24 kernel.
Now Dell, with some help from Broadcom and Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, has just released a Linux friendly Broadcom Wi-Fi driver for both 32 and 64-bit Linuxes. According to John Hull, Dell's Manager of Linux OS Engineering, "updated Linux wireless drivers that support cards based on the Broadcom 4311, 4312, 4321, and 4322 chipsets" are now available.
For Dell users, this means that they now have Wi-Fi support for the Dell 1490, 1395, 1397, 1505, and 1510 Wireless cards. Specifically, Hull wrote that, "We're currently offering the Dell 1397 card with the Studio 15 system with Ubuntu 8.04 and the 1395 card is supported on our new Inspiron Mini 9." But, this isn't a Dell or Ubuntu only deal. The drivers should work with any Broadcom card using one of the supported chipsets on any modern Linux.
Now, the drivers aren't, as Hull points out, completely open source. "It is currently only partially open-source, similar to ATI or NVIDIA video drivers, so keep this in mind when deciding if you want to use it." In other words, you'll still need the proprietary Broadcom firmware. If you're not a free-software absolutist though, you'll be able to use these drivers.
Hull went on to say that "This driver is included in the Ubuntu 8.10 release," which is due out at the end of October, "and should be added to Ubuntu 8.04." If you can't wait, you can download the driver, the Broadcom Linux STA driver today from a Broadcom site. The link in the Dell blog is broken, but this link, as of October 7th, was working. Enjoy! - linuxlucas, on 10/08/2008, -5/+22find . -name *.jpg -exec convert -resize 600 {} {} ;
Commandline = useful+productive. - inactive, on 10/08/2008, -0/+17NDISwrapper be gone.
- kd420, on 10/08/2008, -0/+16Yeah, there was a step by step guide to installing the windows drivers on the ubuntu forums, but this is great news. This means that they actually care about, or at least acknowledge, the Linux base.
- TheZorch, on 10/08/2008, -9/+24People bitching about the terminal is asinine. It shows just how unwilling you are to be open minded and flexible. Good Linux command line literacy gives a Linux user a 1,000 times more power over their operating system than any Windows-only system administrator has over Windows Server.
- Stonekeeper, on 10/08/2008, -5/+19The terminal allows me to be way more productive than a damn point-and-click interface.
- kruykaze, on 10/08/2008, -0/+12You found the right place to proclaim that.
- cybr2K, on 10/08/2008, -0/+12"Hull went on to say that 'This driver is included in the Ubuntu 8.10 release,' which is due out at the end of October.."
It's in the 8.10 beta that was released last week. Works great on my notebook's BCM4311 wireless card! =) - SolidSnak, on 10/08/2008, -2/+13I never really had a problem installing the windows driver with ndiswrapper for my laptop after the first time but I suppose the terminal might scare some people.
- TheZorch, on 10/08/2008, -2/+12This is big news, on the device driver front WiFi has been the last unexplored frontier. Everything else works with Linux, sometimes without installing any drivers or additional software (same goes for the Mac).
Now, let the War on Windows begin! - nickdot, on 10/08/2008, -1/+10But I guess for this Novell developer that still doesn't count as working on the kernel. Well for me Ubuntu does contribute a lot to Linux.
- cardyology, on 10/08/2008, -1/+10Ubuntu + macbook + working wifi with WPA = AWESOME!
- bl4k3r, on 10/08/2008, -2/+11As Linux is about freedom of choice, people should also have the freedom of being able to use their PC efficiently without using the terminal. Which is, contrary to popular belief, by all means possible.
I know that Linux is basically enrooted in the motto "by professionals - for professionals". But if it is intended to dethrone Windows one day, many things have still to be improved. - tomjowitt, on 10/08/2008, -0/+8Broadcom issues were pretty much the only reason I ditched Ubuntu on my laptop and reinstalled XP. This is great news.
- bl4k3r, on 10/08/2008, -1/+9As the topic here is Wi-Fi, I say there shall not be any instructions, neither GUI-related nor CLI-related. After installing a new OS to your PC, the hardware should just work.
My notebook is indeed equipped with one of those lousy-supported Broadcom chipsets, and yes, I had to go through 30 minutes of command-line kung-fu to be able to connect to my router.
Now, imagine this would have happened while trying to convert my father (he's 58) to Ubuntu. Guess what OS he would have wanted back immediately? - 1310nm, on 10/08/2008, -0/+8FINALLY! Hopefully I can get better than a 5.5mb/s connection from 5 meters away from my AP now.
- HiddenCanuck, on 10/08/2008, -0/+8CARRIER HAS ARRIVED.
- inactive, on 10/08/2008, -0/+8More like they don't want to lose business with Dell, which is starting to become REALLY friendly with the Linux community.
- pyrohotdog, on 10/08/2008, -0/+8That's awesome....but go figure my Airport Extreme (BCM4306) didn't make the list of supported devices.
- xSledgewick, on 10/08/2008, -1/+8I guess I'm excited... though, my B43 driver doesn't even work, haha.
- spiffyfitz, on 10/08/2008, -1/+8lol you're "that guy"
- luchid, on 10/08/2008, -2/+9You tried to be smart using the word "populous", and failed. You don't know the difference between "your" and "you're"., and the word is "populace" So please go back to defragmenting your HD and running your spyware tests.
- luchid, on 10/08/2008, -1/+8I'm sorry if every bit of news here on Digg doesn't cater to youspecifically. We'll try to fix that and consult with you everytime a news story comes out.
- priegog, on 10/08/2008, -0/+6I'll respond without being sardonic, on the hope that you didn't mean to come across as arrogant as you did.
Because having a native driver would allow to do things like achieve closer to 54Mbps instead of the 2Mbps that I usually get from an 8-metre distance to the router, and usea your card for more advanced things like packet sniffing and such... Oh, and implementing WPA and such will also be inmensely easier now.
Not to forget the fact that now it will also work out of the box, instead of you (or a newbie) having to look around in the forums how to use ndiswrapper or the b43 driver. - booyahbitch, on 10/08/2008, -1/+7That is awesome! I have been running SuSE in a VM for a couple of years because of this very issue, now I can switch over to running XP/VEESTA in the VM!!!
- theaceoffire, on 10/08/2008, -0/+6@bilbravo
^_^ Then digg him up.
Digg fixed the system, you can change it for as long as you want.
For example: I bury you, then digg twice. - aliem, on 10/08/2008, -1/+7maybe you need to extract the firmware from the proprietary drivers
- leamanc, on 10/08/2008, -1/+7Never had a problem making WiFi work with a MacBook--even WPA2. (Don't MacBooks use an Intel wifi chipset?) PowerBooks, on the other hand, were always a PITA, although I did manage to get it working with the help of fwcutter and ndiswrapper..
- iofthestorm, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5Bah, still no support for bcm4328. Ah well, ndiswrapper works well enough.
- d03boy, on 10/08/2008, -1/+6Finally I can hack people's networks without any complications!
- inactive, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5Maybe you but some of us did, and don't even get me started with new users...
This is FANTASTIC news. - Oysterville, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5The whole time us Linux users have prayed for better hardware support. We get it from a valuable resource and you want to PUNISH THEM FOR NOT DOING IT SOONER?
Try being thankful that we've gotten it, be thankful that Dell's stepped up to the place to get it (and more) done, and hope that we'll get more usable driver help in the future. - ethana2, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5Don't forget to tip well.
- BigglesPiP, on 10/08/2008, -1/+6At last, about 2 and a half years too late for me tho :(
- sgu222e, on 10/08/2008, -2/+7Link dead
- ethana2, on 10/08/2008, -0/+5In two weeks, my family will have three Dells running Ubuntu, two of which will have been purchased with it preinstalled by Dell.
I take my 1420n EVERYWHERE, and whenever people ask me what I'm using, I advertise for Dell.
I'm glad to see this happen, I don't even care /why/ it happened, I'm just glad to see it. - mattycoze, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4Because the old drivers may run out of date??
It's a seamless install process (for most people) and if it doesn't work synaptic/apt-get can be used to restore the old driver. Actually I'm noticing a marked improvement with networking speeds at home at at university networks. - TERMDEFINED, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4How can I install this driver if I installed Ubuntu via wubi? Any info would be great! I love digg.
- HonoredMule, on 10/08/2008, -2/+6I'll never understand why people insist on having instructions of the form:
"Find this widget-thingie that hopefully looks something like "blah" (assuming you use the unmodified GUI from disto X) and is hopefully found somewhere in such-and-such a menu. Open it, then go to menu->menuItem->subMenuItem, find in that a tab labelled "blah2" (assuming it's in English), which hopefully has a section something like ... with a button in the right-hand corner that opens..."
...and are so terrified by:
TYPE THIS COMMAND: "exact string"
That's not about ease of use, that's just total unwillingness to accept new things. There are good CLIs and bad CLIs just like there are good and bad GUIs. Good CLIs are just verbose enough to give you a sense of what's going on and what you have done and what changes came about as a result, in user-accessible language. Linux's CLI tools are pretty decent in that regard.
(I work in a mixed Windows/Linux environment, and I'd be totally lost without my Windows OR Linux installs. Each OS is a terrible, hack-kneed stand-in for the other.) - TheKorn2, on 10/08/2008, -1/+5(deleted)
- stoni, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4If you are an experienced user and wanna test it now: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.p ...
(See README) - techn0bear, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4I understand that a manufacturer needs to prioritize their development. Wouldnt we all find it obsurd if they were offering drivers for BeOS and Amiga? However Linux is by no means obsolete or not worth thier time. The only reason theyre now even considering new drivers past the basics is because of the new ultra mobile device craze. But we all know this.
- tvhwy, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4I have been successfully using the native bcm43xx driver since last December. What improvements does this release offer?
- iofthestorm, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4Uhh... you're overlooking graphics drivers, which are kind of the huge 800lb gorilla in the room. At least drivers for high end/recent cards anyway, although RadeonHD is making some progress on that front.
- sukimashita, on 10/08/2008, -0/+4Depending on the revision of your Macbook, they have either Atheros or Broadcom ("n"-capable) chips.
- MattBD, on 10/08/2008, -0/+3Try using ndisgtk. It's a graphical frontend for ndiswrapper, so it might make it easier. I believe it even comes on the Ubuntu install CD, so you don't even have to go online to download it.
- bl4k3r, on 10/08/2008, -1/+4(But apart from that I absolutely agree with you in saying that neither Windows nor Linux are OSes that might even remotely be considered as best-of-breed.)
- columb, on 10/08/2008, -0/+3http://direct2dell.com/one2one/archive/2008/10/03/ ...
Direct link.
Also, posted 2 days ago:
http://digg.com/tech_news/DELL_Linux_driver_availa ... -
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