Re: Debian USB Wifi
> I want to buy a usb to wifi network. How do I check if the hardware(usb)
> has debian support?
That's tricky:
- It's fairly frequent that manufacturers change the underlying hardware
without changing the product name (presumably because they find that
some other wifi chipset provides the same featureset at a lower cost).
So you can't really trust info about "FooBar 250++ works" nor the reverse.
- There's "supported" and "supported": some chipsets are well supported
by the vanilla Linux kernel (tho often requiring non-Free firmware
blobs), which is generally a guarantee that it will stay supported in
the foreseeable future and will work reliably and without much effort
(if any). Other chipsets are supported only via drivers not included
in the kernel (or tentatively included in the vanilla kernel but not
"yet" well integrated), and your mileage will definitely vary with
those: some features may not be supported (e.g. `hostapd`), and
configuring them and keeping them working in the face of upgrades can
be a constant struggle.
The best option is to buy one that says clearly that it works with the
vanilla kernel and without requiring proprietary firmware blobs.
These are hard to come by and will usually be sold by companies
specializing in this market like tehnoetic.com, thinkpenguin.com, ...
https://ryf.fsf.org/ can be a good starting point for that, tho it has
very few products and most of them are old, but it can help find
companies that care.
Be aware that there is simply no wifi card (USB or otherwise) that
satisfies this requirement beyond the 11n spec: beyond 11n you currently
have to accept the use of a proprietary binary blob :-(
Otherwise it can be worthwhile to buy secondhand, in which case the
product is "fixed", so you can check which chipset it uses, and then
figure out what's the status of the drivers for this chipset.
Stefan
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