Linux overcame most of its former driver woes years ago except for one noticeable exception: Wi-Fi drivers. While many Wi-Fi cards and chipsets were Linux friendly, two major Wi-Fi chipset vendors, Atheros and Broadcom, kept their drivers proprietary. Now, things are changing. Atheros has released a true open-source driver for its latest 802.11n chipsets.
Madwifi.org, an open-source developer group that has long worked on open-source drivers for Atheros WI-Ffi chipsets, announced that Atheros released the new driver, ath9k, underneath the liberal ISC license. Moreover, according to the Madwifi programmers, “This driver is aimed at inclusion to the Linux kernel and supports all Atheros IEEE 802.11n devices. This represents a major shift in terms of support from Atheros with respect to Linux.”
While Atheros had long offered some support for Linux, it has always insisted on keeping its HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) code proprietary. Last year, an open-source alternative, OpenHAL, became available, but it wasn’t completely compatible with the newer chipsets.
This change by Atheros isn’t too much of a surprise because the company just hired two of Madwifi’s top developers: Luis Rodriguez and Jouni Malinen.
According to Madwifi, Atheros also plans to add Linux access point support to ath9k with the aid of its two new open-source engineers.
There are many Wi-Fi devices already on the market using the ath9k-supported chipsets. These include Belkin’s N1 Wireless Notebook Card; D-Link’s RangerBooster N and Extreme N lines; Linksys’ WPC and WMP N lines; NEC’s WL300NC; and Netgear’s WNHDE111 Video Bridge and WN711.
15 responses so far ↓
1 Atheros becomes Linux friendlier // Jul 27, 2008 at 7:42 pm
[...] Go to the author’s original blog: Atheros becomes Linux friendlier [...]
2 FuzzLinks.com » Atheros makes friends with Linux // Jul 28, 2008 at 2:40 am
[...] Hurrah! Major Wi-Fi vendor finally opens all the way up to Linux.http://practical-tech.com/network/atheros-becomes-linux-friendlier/ [...]
3 Atheros se acerca a Linux « Arbol Charyou // Jul 28, 2008 at 4:42 am
[...] Atheros makes friends with Linux [...]
4 nerdd.net | news and opinion // Jul 28, 2008 at 5:57 am
Atheros makes friends with Linux | nerdd.net…
\r\nHurrah! Major Wi-Fi vendor finally opens all the way up to Linux.\r\nMadwifi.org, an open-source…
5 JImDaTwit // Jul 28, 2008 at 6:39 am
Thats Awesome. Linux is the best O/S around. Windows is NOT the only kid on the block anymore!
JT
http://www.FireMe.To/udi
6 despuesdegoogle » Blog Archive » Atheros libera driver WiFi para Linux // Jul 28, 2008 at 9:57 am
[...] La noticia, en Practical Technology [...]
7 Atheros libera driver WiFi para Gnu/Linux | SLUSACH // Jul 28, 2008 at 9:47 pm
[...] Practical Technology [...]
8 Atheros hace amigos con Gnu/Linux (Abrio sus drivers WiFi) « The it geek blog // Jul 29, 2008 at 10:51 am
[...] Fuente : Practical Technology [...]
9 Atheros chipset now supported by OpenSource « Applejaxkz’s Blog // Jul 29, 2008 at 5:38 pm
[...] Full Article [...]
10 Expanded wireless driver support in Linux // Aug 1, 2008 at 12:14 am
[...] Sure, there are proprietary drivers (I use them in Ubuntu) but not as many Open Source ones — although the efforts of the folks at Madwifi.org are changing that. And another piece of good news has come from chipset maker Atheros: they’re releasing their new driver under an Open Source license. You can read more about it here. [...]
11 GeekThought » Blog Archive » Atheros finally releases open source Wi-Fi drivers // Aug 6, 2008 at 4:24 pm
[...] article on Practical Tech indicates “Atheros released the new driver, ath9k, underneath the liberal [...]
12 mmmmna // Aug 7, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Interestingly, when I contacted Broadcom in early 2007 about Linux drivers for a 54g card which used a Broadcom chip, Broadcom told me they had released reference drivers for Linux to the engineering companies which used the Broadcom chips. Somewhere, the truth is out there, possibly someone lied to me.
13 Atheros se acerca a Linux « Linux Reflejo // Oct 4, 2008 at 2:16 am
[...] Atheros makes friends with Linux [...]
14 KJS Computer Services // Oct 17, 2008 at 11:53 pm
[...] worlds, firmware should be compiled with each driver. Linux users know all too well that, despite the opening of some proprietary driver firmware by vendors like Atheros, the Wi-Fi chip OEM, too many devices still require proprietary firmware. In Linux 2.6.27, the [...]
15 The five best things in Linux 2.6.27 - Computer Forums // Oct 21, 2008 at 7:16 am
[...] worlds, firmware should be compiled with each driver. Linux users know all too well that, despite the opening of some proprietary driver firmware by vendors like Atheros, the Wi-Fi chip OEM, too many devices still require proprietary firmware. In Linux 2.6.27, the [...]
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