Re: Wifi
On 3/9/2014 6:36 AM, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Du, 09 mar 14, 05:56:09, Stan Hoeppner wrote:
>>
>> The Intel NICs AFAIK are all free firmware, so if he has the Intel NIC
>> it shouldn't be a firmware load issue.
>
> Unfortunately not :(
>
> $ dmesg | grep firmware
> [ 9.914262] iwl4965 0000:03:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware iwlwifi-4965-2.ucode
> [ 9.914276] iwl4965 0000:03:00.0: loaded firmware version 228.61.2.24
Yeah, I'd forgotten how stupid, yes stupid, the Debian policy on source
code is, free distribution of binary firmware blobs be dammed. The only
thing this accomplishes is pissing off users, especially new ones. The
targets of the policy, the hardware vendors, haven't budged one
micrometer in all these years because Debian swings a twig, not a heavy
club such as Red Hat or SuSE. Debian will never posses a large enough
club, so this policy should be abandoned for the sake of the (especially
new) users.
I started rolling my own kernels from vanilla source 10 years ago, and
from that point I've built my drivers and firmware blobs into the
kernel. So I've not had to deal with Stallman's rabid socialist
nonsense for a very long time. I solved this problem long ago and moved
on. "Out of sight, out of mind" as they say.
> I actually thought Atheros chipsets didn't need firmware, but the
> description of firmware-atheros seems to suggest otherwise.
Atheros have had many generations of wireless product. The vanilla 3.2
source tree has drivers for 4 generations of Atheros NICs, 3.13 has 8.
../carl9170/fc.c performs full byte verification of the eeprom data at
driver initialization, so it seems clear this model requires host
(kernel) installed firmware. I don't find a similar file in the other
ath directories, suggesting the other models may have non-installable,
or factory loaded permanent firmware. I say 'may' because I simply
don't have time to browse the remarks and code in all of these many
dozens of wireless driver files. I think it's safe to say that some Ath
cards have used installable firmware and some don't.
The requirement of loadable firmware has nothing to do with Linux, but
the desire of the hardware vendors to be able to fix problems and add
functionality over the life of the product, primarily the former. Most
of it is designed for Windows, and vendor products that have passed WHQL
certification can get new drivers and firmware pushed out via Windows
Update. Installation is optional, but the automatic distribution
infrastructure is there.
Cheers,
--
Stan
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