Wireless Adapters for Linux

[Michael A Peters]

On Sun, 2007-02-11 at 00:25 +0000, Albert Graham wrote:

> 
> I'm afraid there's nothing new here, they may well have the best Linux 
> wireless device + driver but they will not release it to the community.

The driver they specify is madwifi.
Theses are Atheros based cards.

It is true that the madwifi driver can not be in the kernel. However, it
is not true that Atheros has an anti open source attitude, as your
statement suggests.

Atheros gave considerable help in the creation of an open source driver.
Unfortunately, the madwifi driver requires a binary HAL.

This is because the FCC says that users can not be allowed to alter
signal strength, and the atheros chipset does that in the driver, not on
the card. Therefore, that part of it has to be closed source.

It is not that they are trying to keep anything from us, it is the FCC.

Some might argue that they should be doing that stuff on the chip and
not in the driver. However, it should be noted that performance is still
excellent when done in a driver, and production cost is reduced with
less chips. That's the same reason why winmodems exist.

One thing I will say - the price they want for an atheros based card is
absolutely insane. I got mine for $15.00 brand new. Granted, it was on
sale - and granted, it's a CardBus card. But still - the prices they are
speaking of are just nuts.