Re: Open source Atheros wifi? (ath10k)
On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 01:19:21PM -0500, Steven Mainor wrote:
> My main concern for the laptop in question is security. So from a security
> standpoint, what is the difference between using a wifi card with built in
> closed source firmware, and closed source firmware that is loaded by the
> kernel like ath10k. Either way the firmware is only running on the card, Not
> the CPU, correct?
>
There's a thread going on in debian-devel mailing list at the moment on more
or less exactly the problem of getting wifi to work for nonfree firmware.
You may find that the firmware-atheros package from non-free in Debian will do the trick. You may need to put the .deb onto a USB stick. I can't quite
remember whether the installer including the non-free firmware CD includes
firmware-atheros by default but that's found at
https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/debian-10.7.0-amd64-netinst.iso
Non-free: From the manufacturer, freely distributable but we can't fix it easily if it goes wrong and we're reliant on the manufacturers to produce updates. Wifi is the most significant stuff to require non-free
firmware in general.
> Or am I misunderstanding the terminology?
>
> Obviously neither is ideal but is either less secure?
Hope this helps - all the very best, as ever,
Andy C
>
> ---
> Steven Mainor
>
> ---
> Steven Mainor
>
> On 2021-01-16 12:52, Reco wrote:
> > Hi.
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 16, 2021 at 12:25:10PM -0500, Steven Mainor wrote:
> > > I have a laptop with a QCA9377 Atheros AC wifi card. When I install
> > > debian 10.7 amd64 I get a warning about missing non-free firmware and
> > > the wifi doesn't work. It was my understanding that ath10k was open
> > > source and included in linux. Is this not the case?
> >
> > The driver is free software. The firmware it requires is not.
> > Thank US FCC for that - [1].
> >
> >
> > > If not is there any wireless AC card that doesn't require binary
> > > drivers?
> >
> > To the best of my knowledge - there are none. Again, [1].
> >
> >
> > > And barring that, what is the best wifi(N?) card I can buy
> > > that doesn't require closed source drivers/firmware?
> >
> > Anything that's ath9k supports does not require any firmware at all.
> > Ath9k is limited to 802.1n though. See [2] for an example list.
> >
> > Reco
> >
> > [1] https://hackaday.com/2016/02/26/fcc-locks-down-router-firmware
> > [2]
> > https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/ath9k/products/external
pub RSA 4096/9477C19B 2020-03-14 Steven Mainor <steve@degga.net>
> sub RSA 4096/A4F717B9 2020-03-14
> >
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