[lug] Linux and wireless

[Jonathan Corbet]

Craig Talbert <Talbert at colorado.edu> wrote:

> AFAIK the ndiswrapper works for most popular wireless devices:
> 
> http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

I would avoid that if at all possible.  You're putting non-free software
into your free kernel.  Ndiswrapper will break with each kernel upgrade
and need fixing - and, for distributions which ship 4K stack kernels
(Fedora) there *is* no fix.  No kernel developer will help you out if
you have troubles.

Linux wireless is at a bit of a low point; see, for example,
http://lwn.net/Articles/167270/.  But it is getting better in a hurry;
by the end of this year, I expect the situation to be much improved.
Watch LWN for coverage from the wireless summit in April :)

That doesn't help you right now, though.  For the short term, look for
the Intel IPW chipsets; they are well supported in current kernels.  For
Atheros chipsets you can use the highly experimental native driver from
www.ath-driver.org, or go with the madwifi drivers (madwifi.net).  Some
distributions (i.e. Ubuntu) will install madwifi for you.  Madwifi still
has a proprietary blob, but at least it's a meant-for-Linux proprietary
blob.  For Broadcom chipsets, there is an experimental driver in
reasonably good shape: http://lwn.net/Articles/162894/.  Between all of
those, there's actually a fair number of options out there.

jon

Jonathan Corbet
Executive editor, LWN.net
corbet at lwn.net