Comparison of open source wireless drivers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Please cite sources for the others answer than no in for the firmware. See also the firmware section of the talk page for the migration from yes, no, N/A to a more informative version, example are in the talk page, atheros driver has been migrated.

[edit] General information

Some drivers may be missing from this comparison.

[edit] Linux

[edit] DragonFly BSD

[edit] FreeBSD

[edit] NetBSD

Unless otherwise noted, these drivers are included in NetBSD 3.0.

[edit] OpenBSD

(A full list of supported wireless devices may be obtained by searching OpenBSD's online manual pages, i.e. by typing apropos wireless in the console. For information on development methodologies, see Theo de Raadt's 2006 presentation on Open Documentation for Hardware.)

[edit] Solaris and OpenSolaris

[edit] Darwin, OpenDarwin and Mac OS X

[edit] Driver capabilities

[edit] Linux

[edit] OpenBSD

[edit] Notes

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} 'N/A' means firmware is stored in device at all times, 'yes' means firmware is available for totally free redistribution, 'no' means you have to get into non-free-software contract with the manufacturer to get access to the firmware
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f g} in terms of no binary-only requirements that are imposed by the driver, i.e. you can modify all code that is run on your CPU
3. ^ A dmesg in ubunru Edgy eft gives the following:[17180163.584000] ath_hal: 0.9.17.2 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
4. ^ ^{a b c d} The card doesn't have a host cpu and so it doesn't require a firmware source
5. ^ The proprietary HAL can be replaced by a port of the OpenHAl(from the BSD ath driver) to Linux
6. ^ Their binary HAL runs in kernel mode
7. ^ The openhal is imported from OpenBSD,tested with an ARC5213 card that isn't supported by openbsd...and it didn't worked...need to be tested with cards supported by openbsd
8. ^ userspace binary-only daemon is required
9. ^ http://lwn.net/Articles/214687/
10. ^ http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/46
11. ^ ^{a b} There is a Free software firmware called FreeMAC,but it's not yet ready for non developers use
12. ^ ^{a b} RT61 does not need a firmware when it use the rt61 legacy driver but need one with the rt2x00 driver
13. ^ the sources are here
14. ^ acx(4) for FreeBSD uses a 4-clause BSD licence, which requires that all advertising materials mentioning it give credit for it; the Free Software Foundation says this makes it incompatible with the GPL [1]
15. ^ There is more details about the port at kerneltrap
16. ^ it's not the same driver that the OpenBSD ath driver it's a port from Madwifi to OpenSolaris
17. ^ source, I don't know if the HAL can be replaced with OpenHAL
18. ^ Seattle Wireless WirelessDriver Support Wiki
19. ^ except for the rt2400 chipset; only the rt2500 chipset and the rt2570 chipset are supported
20. ^ deviscape branch only
21. ^ ^{a b c d} there is no wpa support in openBSD

[edit] References

• http://support.intel.com/support/notebook/sb/CS-006408.htm
• The Sourceforge IPW websites (ipw 2100,ipw2200 and ipw3945)
• The FSF website for the Ralink and Realtek cards
• Kerneltrap for the list of OpenBSD drivers
• The OpenSolaris website for the list of OpenSolaris and Solaris drivers
• http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2084
• http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Rt2x00_beta
• http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Wireless.html
• rt2x00 README from cvs
• http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/9/323

[edit] See also

• Seattle Wireless MacOS drivers
• Seattle Wireless Linux drivers
• http://www.linux-wlan.org/docs/wlan_adapters.html.gz
• List of cards with their chip from ndiswrapper