Talk:Comparison of open source wireless drivers

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[edit] OS

  • mabe we could have one table per os
    • Linux
    • OpenBSD
    • FreeBSd
    • NetBSD
    • Darwin
    • open-solaris???
  • mabe we could make an os comparison and add the os inside the projects but bsd like OS behave diferently

does any one has an idea on how to handle multiple OS

Maybe we could have different sections for each chipset and list the available drivers for each of them? dystopianray 02:28, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
so we have 2 choices
or we see the os suport from a chipset
or we see what chipset suport an os
personaly i like trying os but most of the people does not and have only one OS
so mabe the most interesting thing is to show them wich chip is suported in their os
so mabe we will add some non free drivers but that must be discussed before...what do you think about adding MacOSX drivers?
Personaly i don't know(about the non free drivers)

00 tux(my point of views(for npov), howto customise a signature) | talk 07:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] RE-moove

we need to change open-source in free software because some licence such as apsl 1.0 aren't aceptable licences and are open-source and not free software for this reasons or mabe we could add non free drivers to the comparison and change the name(if it exist)

[edit] OpenHAL 4 linux

why is the openHAL website dead? is openHAL dead and unmaintained?

There's more information about OpenHAL at http://madwifi.org/wiki/OpenHAL. Ceros 18:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I'm all for expanding opensource info...

However, these charts tend to be very biased to or against certain platforms, and are prone to be out of date as soon as people will agree upon terms and a layout long enough for it to stick. Just seems like a waste of time doing these big comparisons rather that keeping individual os pages containing this info up to date. I really do think the time and effort would be much more useful keeping up a master list of open source projects and then working to keep them up to date. One size does not fit all. Any author that knows a lot about one project isn't going to know a lot about the others and it just invites flames from people that disagree and generates tons of wasted posts on other related newsgroups which takes away from the image of Wikipedia in my opinion. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by M Scheliga (talk • contribs) .

I sort of agree with this. Comparison of operating systems is one thing, but this profusion of "Comparison of open source X" seems to be going a bit far, especially ones that are a bit ugly, poorly structured, easily go out of date, and are of minority interest. NicM 09:36, 13 June 2006 (UTC).

[edit] firmwares and expert

http://kerneltrap.org/node/4118 why revert back:

  • false information such as atheros card that doesn't have a firmware
  • bad presentation...you must give 2 informations at once:
    • technical information about the firmware
    • the freeness of the firmware

the technical information can be divided in parts:

  • on-board firmware
  • loadable firmware
  • no firmware at all

the freeness include:

  • the distribution of the firmware if it is loadable
  • if there is free firmware such as freemac

example: remplace yes by:

  • no firmware
  • redistribuable loadable firmware
  • non-redistribuable loadable firmware
  • loadable firmware avaliable with a contract
  • on-board firmware

keep the (1) for the free firmware

if you want change {{Yes}} by {{but yes}} and {{No}} by {{but No}}

From the point of view of this page, I'm not sure why the difference between "no firmware" and "on-board firmware" is interesting; in both cases, "N/A" would seem to suffice, unless there's an issue of firmware updates from the vendor (i.e., you don't need to load the firmware at boot time, but you might need to load it on an update). Guy Harris 07:50, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted Text

I have deleted the following text (added by User:00 tux). as it is inappropriate for an article page.

PLEASE REVERT CHANGES BEFORE THE MOOVE TO FREE FIRMWARE AND PLEASE USE TAKL PAGE(TO THE USER) REASON:FALSE INFORMATION AND PRESENTATION EXAMPLE OF FALSE IFORMATION:ATHEROS DOESN'T USE A FIRMWARE AT ALL!!!

LVC 22:29, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD

Most BSDs have the very same drivers for the very same devices written by the very same people. These include ral, ural, ipw, iwi, wpi developed by Damien from OpenBSD; an, wi by Bill Paul from FreeBSD; atw, rtw by David Young from NetBSD. Obviously, these must be grouped together, and not duplicated three times on the very same page... MureninC 20:48, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Then make a "BSD" section to replace the sections for all four (yes, four - don't forget DragonFly BSD) free-software BSDs. You could add back the "Operating System" column, but you might not want to lose the "Integration" information (which should perhaps indicate, for integrated drivers, which release first had them - so that column might have more than one item, one for each BSD in which it appears.
Note also that there should be driver capabilities sections for the other OSes, similar to the "Linux driver capabilities" section, and that some particular driver might have capabilities in one OS that it doesn't have in others (e.g., the FreeBSD Aironet driver isn't integrated with the 802.11 framework as are the NetBSD and, I think, OpenBSD drivers, but it supports monitor mode, unlike the NetBSD and OpenBSD Aironet drivers). Guy Harris 07:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I disagree strongly with the idea of having a unique BSD column, for the same driver, the status can be different for each BSD, as of 18/03/2007 for instance the 'ral' driver does not support the same chipsets on FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD. See the details ! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.129.227.99 (talk • contribs) 17:38, 17 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Marvell Libertas 88W8388

Seems like there's a new driver coming along for Linux. Marvell has joined the One Laptop Per Child project and Red Hat people seems to be working like crazy on the driver code Marvell released along with specs under NDA to Red Hat only.

Press release: http://www.marvell.com/press/pressNewsDisplay.do?releaseID=479 Press release: http://www.marvell.com/press/pressNewsDisplay.do?releaseID=557 Mailinglist: http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/libertas-dev/ Git tree: http://git.infradead.org/?p=users/marcelo/libertas;a=summary

[edit] Ralink

there is 2 kind of drivers for the ralink cards on linux the rt2x00 that is a new and experimental driver rt 2400,rt2500,rt61 and rt73 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.27.13.176 (talk) 00:07, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Ralink cards

the name of the ralink card can be confusing,specialy when you find rt2600 with your lspci and you've got a driver named rt61

  • rt2400pci
  • rt2500pci
  • rt2500usb=rt2570
  • rt2600=rt61
    • rt2561
    • rt2561s
    • rt2661
  • rt73
    • rt2573
    • rt2671

[edit] Deviscape vs others

There are several stacks in linux we could add the stack used by the drivers

i have 2 examples:

  • rt2500 use a stack that is in the kernel
  • the rt2x00 use the deviscape stack
  • madwifi use a stack that is in the kernel
  • dadwifi use the deviscape stack —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.27.13.176 (talk) 20:21, 4 February 2007 (UTC).

Could we add the stack of the driver?GNUtoo(my point of views(for npov), howto customise a signature) | talk 14:16, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, somebody could do so. Anybody who wants to could add it as a column, using Template:dunno, and then people who know which stack a particular driver uses could fill the column in. Guy Harris 18:43, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Comment moved from main article

[Please leave this comment on the talk page. It is not appropriate for the main article] Please cite sources for the others answer than no in for the firmware. See also the firmware section of the talk page for the migration from yes, no, N/A to a more informative version, example are in the talk page, atheros driver has been migrated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Diego (talk • contribs) 16:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


[edit] iwlwifi 802.11b network

Not strictly about the artice, but the table list this as working, however I can't connect to my 802.11b only AP resulting in the access point resetting itself. There is also an open bug report noting people can't connect to theirs 802.11b AP's. Has anyone here had any luck getting it to connect to an 802.11b only AP? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.136.35.53 (talk) 12:59, 16 January 2008 (UTC)