Reverse Engineered 802.11b+ Drivers 272
orv writes "When Andreas Mohr found that his new wireless networking card wasn't supported under Linux rather than returning the card and getting himself a supported one, he decided to set up a project to write his own drivers instead - http://acx100.sourceforge.net.
Companies such as D-Link had initially promised to release linux drivers for these cards but later backed down from that promise and announced that Linux would not be supported and that customers should not hold on to the cards in the hope of getting them working, as shown on their current FAQ.
Texas Instruments, the makers of the chipsets upon which these 802.11b+ cards are based refused to release code or specifications for the cards, no doubt for similar reasons that were recently discussed here.
The fact that the current alpha release is certainly as good, and in some areas better, than the binary drivers that escaped from one of the card manufactureres speaks volumes for the quality and determination of the team to create their own drivers."
And yet, the UN suggests WiFi laptops??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is this what poor third-world countries yearn for? Should they leapfrog to disaster? I'm disappointed someone like Mr.Kofi Annan suggested this stuff to poor nations.
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DCMA Anyone? (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
Hell yeah ... (Score:5, Insightful)
So what happened OSS (free and not free) and ALSA happened. Bunch of people go together and said "To hell with the manufacturers not helping us, we'll make it work anyways". It was with this pressure that companies like "Aureal" (who about 3 months after releasing their first linux driver went under) to release drivers. Now you see sound support almost everywhere with linux and it's uncommom to not have sound. Another example of course would be "winmodems", modems actually designed to only run in windows running just fine in linux. It's always just a matter of time.
The community is strong, but you'll see real grassroots efforts take shape especially when developers are told "no". Wireless AP/Routers are in the sub $60 range and you can get a wireless card for around $20, it's now not just a rich kid toy, but a common mans networking solution. Expect more things to come of wireless support and expect that companies will take notice. Too bad it's not that easy to just start writing kernel mods for hardware support. There's a reason only a select few hack the kernel (it's really not easy), and well if you ever run into a developer, thank them, they put a whole lot of work into something and don't always get the credit they deserve.
Re:Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
A free market is not a fixed set of producers with a bunch of passive consumers who either take it or leave it. If a certain product does almost everything a person wants and he has the expertise to fill in the gaps himself, then by all means he should do so. Just like the X-Box hacks or 3rd party Lexmark printer cartridge refills. Sure, some vendors may be supporting Linux already, but it's always nice to have more choices in case one of them changes their mind. Competition is good.
Now if the card makers start using legal or technological measures to stop these open source efforts, then scream and boycott them.
Re:Why the backpedaling now? (Score:3, Insightful)
That ant Linksys, et al are likely violating the GPL in their proprietary systems, and are afraid of getting called out on it if they released the source.
Really, from another perspective, Open source can kibosh their business plans too: Tell me, how hard is it these days to build a tiny embedded router using linux(free), a low-end pentium($10), two cheap nics(2x$7), and a 8mb compact flash($3-ebay) w/ IDE card reader($20).
It should be ready.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Another alpha-quality product from the religous nuts at the FSF.
They have already pleased the cult leader by calling it GNURadio though, so for the mindless drones and lemmings of RMS, it is perfect.
Re:And yet, the UN suggests WiFi laptops??? (Score:5, Insightful)
People that high up don't think logistics, they think ideas, and let the people below them work out the details. I am sure he wasn't thinking "This is my way to get in the good graces of Bill Gates!!! Third World Countries...Windows 0wnz j00!!!" More than likely it was "It would be cool for all these countries to have wireless laptops" with absolutely 0 knowledge on the details of such an idea.
Taking advantage (Score:5, Insightful)
If nobody bought "unsupported" hardware... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
In these cases people would buy stuff that worked for windows without checking if it worked for linux. By the time they know that linux wouldn't be supported, especially if they were mislead by the manufacturer for such support, the hardware in question was already in their hands.
These hardware components probably were past their return time and they are stuck with them. Rather than go out and buy new ones that have solid linux support, this guy writes his own and shares it so that others in his situation wouldn't have another "windows app" keeping them from linux.
If more people like this worked on hardware that had no solid linux drivers (whose numbers are dwindling steadily), linux becomes that much more of a "plug and play" system where everything "just works". Kudos to them.
Re:Good For Them (Score:2, Insightful)
More likely there's no commerical demand for linux drivers so the corporate developers are told not to invest time in them. Open Source developers choose where to invest their time - corporates are told where.
A psychological standard of quality on the part of the devs leads to a physical and coding standard of quality a cut above the rest.
Huh? You're saying "think quality makes quality" or something?
Re:What about other chipsets? (Score:1, Insightful)
Then why are you still sitting idly, twiddling thumbs!?
Get that thing started *NOW*, dammit!
That's exactly what we did (by registering our project on SourceForge) after some initial gathering by mail, and frankly spoken, the ACX100 driver project somehow managed to turn out to be successful.
Never fail to remember:
Open Source Software: Free as in Free Speech, not as in Free Beer.
*sigh*
All those utterly lame excuses...
Andreas Mohr
Re:Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:1, Insightful)
The best part is that I can charge Linux users the same as the Windows users, and I don't have to write any drivers for them. Instant $hareholder value and I don't have to mess with that crappy GPL or whatever my Linux techies ramble on about....
Re:DCMA Anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, in this business climate, the corporations in question will probably shut these hackers down and forbid product returns. It truly is amazing what companies will do to their customers these days.
Re:Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:3, Insightful)
What we really need is open API's for the hardware, so that anyone can write their own driver instead of having to reverse engineer it by guessing what the hardware interface does.
Just my 2c worth.
Michael
Re:UN is little more than a US plaything??? (Score:2, Insightful)
What could have happened - what will happen (Score:5, Insightful)
In a way, this reminds me of CSS vs DeCSS. It started out as an innocent effort by someone to just be able to play the CSS encoded media they had legally bought and paid for ... no theft would have been involved. But, by having created the necessary software, and now it's in source form, others can do with it as they please, and many would please to steal. Had the big media businesses simply made a binary distributed player, that scenario would not have taken place, and maybe CSS might never have been cracked because of the lack of need to do so.
While WiFi hardware isn't the same scenario, there are some similarities. Had the manufacturers produced a binary-only driver module that could be loaded into the Linux kernel (and supported it properly, something essential when you release something in binary-only form), there would be virtually no need for anyone to go create a source form version. Only those wanting to actually hack on the card might. But with the binary drivers not being released, that forces the open source community, which has way more intellectual resources than companies like Texas Instruments, to create their own drivers, and it is open source.
What they feared most, and what motivated their misguided decisions, will now serve to bring about exactly what they did not want, which is hackers reprogramming the cards to operate off-frequency, or use wider channels (maybe I can get 50 Mbps out of this thing while trashing the UHF band of my neighbor's TV), and FCC pressure to make chips without software frequency/modulation agility (and thus increasing the costs due to the need to do hardware programming and design in specific market commitments for each manufacturing production run).
Re:Don't buy unsupported hardware (Score:2, Insightful)
Just want to say - well done! Been on the list since I found the v0903 driver and before Ivor released his first driver. Well done - it works beautifully. Just shows the Linux community is a community after all. Thanks a lot!
Re:What about other chipsets? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:DCMA Anyone? (Score:2, Insightful)
Back in the day... (Score:3, Insightful)
Manufacturers like Matrox and Diamond were initially the most resistant to providing any kind of support for XFree86. As linux hackers reverse engineered and developed their own drivers and discussion board volume increased, Diamond and Matrox began to release their own drivers.
The issue here with Wi-Fi is that the marketing dudes don't expect that Linux users make up a significant fraction of Wi-Fi customers. They have no axe to grind against linux, instead they just don't see the value. The easiest way to convince them otherwise is to build custom drivers and use them. As soon as a large volume of users are visible, you can bet the commercial vendors will begin providing better support, just like with graphics cards in the early '90s.
Until then, Apple Powerbooks make very attractive Unix workstation.
Re:And yet, the UN suggests WiFi laptops??? (Score:4, Insightful)
What if, and humor me here, Kofi Annan is a lot more savvy than he's letting on?
Maybe Kofi said to himself, "Well, these laptops are light, and have great battery life, and they come with wireless gear... It's really only a matter of time before those Linux maniacs roll out a reverse-engineered set of drivers, so maybe I can buy into this tech bigtime, making it look like I'm US friendly and scoring some points with that nitwit Bush. Then, when the Linux drivers come out, everyone can switch over from the proprietary stuff and I have plenty of plausible deniability -- what? Me? Linux? Whatever do you mean?"
Just a thought... Sometimes people are a lot sharper than they want you to think they are.
These guys caused my DWL-650+ to work yesterday (Score:1, Insightful)
Having some driver development experience, I started reading the sources of the OSS driver, and noticed the amazing work that these guys did in the last months. From a very broken binary driver, they have managed to bring up an almost fully working OSS driver.
However, the PCMCIA DWL-650+ didn't work on Linux until yesterday with the OSS driver - in one of my E-Mail sessions with Andreas, he suggested a small fix to the initialization cn after I compiled and loaded the driver with the fix. It surprised us both completely when this fix got the card actually to work!
Collaboration, people. With only 5 days of having this card which no much hacking experience I have managed to help a few other hundred people out there that might also have this card. The amount of time until an hardware that has no manufactor support will start working on Linux is directly related to amount of people who have this hardware.
So don't be afraid to invest. If the hardware is good on Windows and enough people use it, it will arrive on Linux sooner or later, and your help would be appreciated there.
Linux != always mean commercially viable hardware (Score:1, Insightful)
You can't blame D-Link or other manufacturers for selling a product and trying to make a profit which they will use to design, develop new products.
"Somehow" always means "Somebody" (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop overbreeding.
Stop killing each other.
Stop stealing from the people who honestly want to help you.
Stop torturing people from the wrong village.
Stop maiming your women.
Maybe then you'll get a little respect, instead of the sneers and half-assed offers of help that you keep begging for.