Submission + - The battle for wireless network drivers
An anonymous reader writes: I found this article very interesting, it's about the pain Linux and BSD programmers have in trying to obtain/write device drivers for various wireless cards. This article also has a fairly detailed explanation of how wireless firmwares and drivers work. Two of the manufacturers are actively working with the FOSS community without requiring an NDA.
Written by Jem Matzan The Jem Report
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. To find out more about this situation, I interviewed representatives from network chip manufacturers and programmers from free software operating systems. Their answers and more is at: The battle for wireless network drivers
Written by Jem Matzan The Jem Report
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. To find out more about this situation, I interviewed representatives from network chip manufacturers and programmers from free software operating systems. Their answers and more is at: The battle for wireless network drivers
