Bug#558740: Push of AR9170 1-stage firmware to linux-firmware?
On Mon, Nov 30, 2009 at 06:40:38PM -0800, Geoff Simmons wrote:
> Hi Luis,
>
> Are you still considering a push of the AR9170 1-stage firmware to
> linux-firmware, as per your previous intention? [1]
Well so I was hoping more people would test the GPL based firmware
and instead support that [1]. But after Johannes' help with its release
there hasn't been much activity on its development to try to stabilize
a release. I think those of us interested just sort of have a lot of
other priorities right now.
[1] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ar9170.fw
I don't use ar9170 on a daily basis either so I cannot say I notice any
differences myself, but when I do ask Johannes who I know has tested both
it seems the proprietary 1-stage firmware sometimes works and sometimes
the 2-stage fw works better for him.
I'm inclined to just say to prefer a build of the GPL firmware but
I'm not looking at bug reports and not sure if anyone else is so I cannot
commit to that.
> My interest is in having this packaged for the Debian distribution within its
> firmware-linux-nonfree package [2], which uses content in David Woodhouse's
> linux-firmware tree as its upstream.
Lets see what Johannes and Christian think.
I should note the 1-stage proprietary firmware should be technically the
same as the open one but the open one had a lot of code removed we didn't
need or shared. It also used gcc while the proprietary one was built with
a proprietary sh2 compiler/linker.
> On a related note, I have not encountered issues with use of 1-stage firmware
> on my AR9170-based device (a Netgear WNDA3100), when compared with the 2-stage
> firmware.
I'd encourage to test out the open firmware.
> Thank you for your time.
>
> Geoff
>
> [1] http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=125122858824049&w=2
> [2] http://bugs.debian.org/558740
Luis
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