Call for testing: wpa-supplicant/hostapd in experimental

["Andrej Shadura" <andrew@shadura.me>]

Hi all,

First of all, let me explain what wpa-supplicant and hostapd are, just in case it’s the first time you see the names.
They are two complementary parts implementing the WPA and related protocols, which make Wi-Fi connection secure. Unless you’re 100% time on an fixed Ethernet connection, you’re likely using the wpa-supplicant (the client), and if you own a Wi-Fi access point, most likely it runs hostapd (the server) inside. An alternative to wpa-supplicant is the Intel wireless daemon (iwd).

The upstream of hostapd and wpa-supplicant has been preparing a new version for some time, and it seems things are getting stabilised, so I’d like to upload it to unstable when it gets released. From what I can tell, some oft-requested features (WNM, MBO, FILS and mesh networking) have been improved since the last release, so I’m considering shipping them enabled in Bookworm.

There’s a recent snapshot of the upcoming release in experimental right now. Please consider installing and testing it on your hardware. I myself only own devices with relatively trouble-free Wi-Fi hardware (Intel), so I’m hardly representative of our user base, but I have just switched to that snapshot myself.

I intend to upload the next snapshot to unstable directly in about a month or so if things go well, so it can be tested by more people, but it would be great if as many people as possible could test it before that.

-- 
Cheers,
  Andrej