Wireless: the new barrier for desktop Linux

[Darrin Chandler]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2007 at 10:13:11AM -0700, Josef Lowder wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Oct 2007 07:51, Darrin Chandler wrote (in part)
> > Developers are out there pushing vendors for open specs. 
> > As consumers we can help by only buying cards where the 
> > vendors regard *us* as their customers ...
> So where can one get a list of vendors (specifically for 
> wireless related products) from whom to buy cards that 
> will work with Linux? 

Some links below. I can't really vouch for any of them...

http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/

http://www.linuxemporium.co.uk/products/wireless/

Google more for: Linux compatible wifi

Chipsets I know to avoid: Broadcom, Marvell, Atheros[1]. Those vendors
basically won't even discuss opening specs.

RALink has been cooperative and has released specs. Some people have had
some signal strength issues, but if range isn't normally a problem then
they're fine.

[1] Atheros doesn't play nice, but there's decent support anyway through
reverse engineering. Sam Leffler did some work under NDA and produced an
open source driver which is not too mysterious, and a BLOB HAL which is
completely closed. Reyk Floeter rev engineered the HAL and released it
as OpenHAL under and ISC license (free as in freedom).

-- 
Darrin Chandler            |  Phoenix BSD User Group  |  MetaBUG
dwchandler at stilyagin.com   |  http://phxbug.org/      |  http://metabug.org/
http://www.stilyagin.com/  |  Daemons in the Desert   |  Global BUG Federation