ipw2200 on FC4 problems

[Dave Jones]

On Wed, Jun 15, 2005 at 04:01:43PM +0300, str tux wrote:
 > On 6/15/05, Cyberz z <cyberz_it at hotmail.com> wrote:
 > > hi,
 > > i have installed FC4 on my laptop HP dv1267.
 > > the intel wireless pro/2200bg device is recognized.
 > <sniff>
 > 
 > > but the only configured eth device is the ethernet (eth0).
 > > if i try to create a new wireless connection, it doesn't give me the
 > > possibility to setup the ipw2200 device.
 > > i can use the ipw2200 device to configure an ethernet connection, but when i
 > > activate it, it says that the device doen't exists.
 > > i have tried already to install the driver version 1.0.4, but after that the
 > > device is not recognized at all.
 > 
 > When we can expect a default-out-of-the-box wireless (ipw2x00) support
 > in Fedora?
 > In latest Ubuntu they already have.

The licensing of the firmware prevents free distributions from doing this.
AIUI, if Fedora were to include it, we could distribute it to you, but
the rights aren't transferrable, so you wouldn't be able to make copies of
the CD to give to other folks. For the same reason, mirrors would
probably also be breaking the terms of the license.

So if Ubuntu are distributing this on CD, they're either violating the
license terms, or they have some special agreement with Intel.

One possible way out would be to have a script that runs as part of firstboot
that (if it finds an alternative network connection) downloads it directly
from Intel's website and installs it in the right place.
Although ....

 > Its kinda pain when you don't have other connection but only thru wifi.

In this case, you'd be stuck.

		Dave