Linked by Eugenia Loli-Queru on Thu 21st Dec 2006 08:29 UTC, submitted by Valour
Internet & Networking BSD and Linux programmers have had a lot of success in creating drivers for new computer hardware in a timely manner, but much of their effort has been without the support of major hardware manufacturers. Intel, Marvell, Texas Instruments and Broadcom, though separate and competing entities, seem by one consent to prevent non-Microsoft operating systems from working properly with some of their most widely-used network chips.
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RE[2]: Thanks GNU/Linux
by Moulinneuf on Thu 21st Dec 2006 18:13 UTC in reply to "RE: Thanks GNU/Linux"
Moulinneuf
Member since:
2005-07-06

"This article is about the absence of manufacturer support for *open source* drivers."

The Battle for Wireless Drivers in Linux and BSD ... You are wrong , as usual and again ...

its for ANY wireless drivers.

"OpenBSD has been fighting"

Yes and GNU/Linux as been paying and obtaining the driver documentation that BSD's got to use.

Let me quote the article again :

"Theo de Raadt told me in an email, "Our efforts to do more wireless involves a few approaches. We reverse-engineer what we can. We borrow from other people's reverse-engineering lessons where we can, for instance, prism54.org is a Linux team, but their reverse-engineer work has resulted in knowledge which we can obviously use to write a BSD driver. "

"which has resulted in high quality drivers for *all* open source operating systems. "

Off course , they are GNU/Linux driver that got ported to BSD , like everything else they got this days , when are you guys starting to pay and pull your weight ?

"ndiswrapper wraps closed source windows drivers."

Yes , but they also document the integration and help working on the native solution from those observations.

"madwifi supports atheros cards"

http://madwifi.org/

http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

Wrong again ... unless 3Com , AirLink , Belkin ... BIG ETC, got bought in the last 5 seconds by Atheros ...

"(which OpenBSD has supported for some time now)."

Yes , they ported the GNU/Linux driver and used the GNU/Linux documentation.

Discussion is over , its not **only** OpenBSD.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 1

RE[3]: Thanks GNU/Linux
by phoenix on Thu 21st Dec 2006 19:52 in reply to "RE[2]: Thanks GNU/Linux"
phoenix Member since:
2005-07-11

"madwifi supports atheros cards"

http://madwifi.org/

http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

Wrong again ... unless 3Com , AirLink , Belkin ... BIG ETC, got bought in the last 5 seconds by Atheros ...

madwifi stands for Multi-band Atheros Driver for Wifi. It's the driver for the Atheros chipsets. A lot of different companies use those chipsets in their wireless devices. madwifi *ONLY* supports Atheros chipsets.

If you're going to correct someone, at least use correct information. ;)

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 3

RE[4]: Thanks GNU/Linux
by Moulinneuf on Thu 21st Dec 2006 22:35 in reply to "RE[3]: Thanks GNU/Linux"
Moulinneuf Member since:
2005-07-06

http://madwifi.org/wiki/MadWifi

"MadWifi is short for Multiband Atheros Driver for Wireless Fidelity (WiFi). "

At least be precise yourself ...

I was not discussing the name but the fact that they are a GNU/Linux project that they support more then just the Atheros cards , witch make me 100% correct on my point ( witch was not all OpenBSD ).

Unless , again , 3Com , AirLink , Belkinand all the other cards maker got bought by Atheros , they do a lot more then just support Atheros cards wich make me 100% correct.

Now your right those cards are all based on Atheros chipset , but thats a different point entirely that you just brought up , it as nothing to do with my point.

I was not correcting , I was saying this guy is lying for saying that OpenBSD does everything.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: -1

RE[3]: Thanks GNU/Linux
by openwookie on Thu 21st Dec 2006 22:35 in reply to "RE[2]: Thanks GNU/Linux"
openwookie Member since:
2006-04-25

Yes and GNU/Linux as been paying and obtaining the driver documentation that BSD's got to use. (snipped Theo quote)

As usual, you are stretching the truth. Nothing in that quote says anything about "GNU/Linux" paying for driver docs. What it did say is that sometimes OpenBSD uses Linux drivers (that were reverse engineered on Linux first) as documentation for their own drivers.

Wrong again ... unless 3Com , AirLink , Belkin ... BIG ETC, got bought in the last 5 seconds by Atheros

Madwifi only supports Atheros chipsets (which is what I meant to say). All of the cards listed on the madwifi website are based on the Atheros chipset.

Yes , they ported the GNU/Linux (Atheros) driver and used the GNU/Linux documentation

Wrong again.

"Also new in OpenBSD 3.7 is the ath driver for the Atheros chipsets, an effort led by Reyk Floeter ... Sam Leffler, an Atheros Communications employee at the time, developed a FreeBSD ath driver that links to a binary-only HAL object. Atheros refused to open the binary file, so through much dedicated effort Reyk reversed engineered it"

(http://kerneltrap.org/node/4818)

Also, the madwifi drivers use a binary HAL, so it cannot be included with Linux by default, due to licencing issues

they are GNU/Linux driver that got ported to BSD , like everything else they got this days , when are you guys starting to pay and pull your weight ?

Again, you don't know what you are talking about. Many of the OpenBSD drivers (atw,ral,rtw,rum,wi,zyd) were based on documentation, not reverse engineering.

Read the link below and educate yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Open_Source_Wireless_Dri....

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 2

RE[4]: Thanks GNU/Linux
by Moulinneuf on Thu 21st Dec 2006 23:48 in reply to "RE[3]: Thanks GNU/Linux"
Moulinneuf Member since:
2005-07-06

No , I told the truth : everything is paid and made by GNU/Linux first ( docs , drivers , developers (yours too ) , you take it and work your software and driver from there. We even fund BSD's and pay for the BSD's developer ...

So , thanks GNU/Linux.

Reply Parent Bookmark Score: 0