[lug] Linux and wireless

[Jonathan Corbet]

Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com> wrote:

> > 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.
> 
> Rebuild the kernel with the other stack size?  What's the big deal with
> that?  Does RHEL not offer that option in their kernel source?

For people who are accustomed to building their own kernels, it's not
too hard.  For many others, it's a "big deal" indeed.

With regard to RHEL: why pay all those support fees if you're going to
run unsupported stuff like ndiswrapper?

> Low point?  When was it ever good?  Perhaps back when the original Orinoco
> Gold Card and Prism chipsets were popular, three years ago? It's been on a
> long downhill slide, driven by clueless manufacturers.

The Orinoco/Prism days were nice, things Just Worked.  I believe they
will be nice again.

> But very difficult to match up Vendor names with chipsets.  Standing in a
> typical computer store, staring at boxes, noticing that there's now a new
> "rev 04" of some stupid card that had the right chipset in it three
> revisions ago, and that's the latest information on the web... is a
> maddening experience.

No disagreement there.

jon