MADWiFi Broken on AMD64

Posted by Marcus D. Hanwell on
I had to mark net-wireless/madwifi-driver-0.1_pre20051111 -amd64 as it just causes kernel panics. Until today I have not been able to bring up their web site (database errors or timeouts). Downgrading doesn't seem to work either, and I have been really busy so I have just been using my wired network. I actually bought this Atheros based miniPCI wireless card as I was led to believe it worked better than the Broadcom card I had under Linux! They seem to know about the issue, but it has not been solved yet.

Now I am thinking that may be I need to look at buying another wireless card :-( I think a closed source HAL is just about as bad as a closed source driver... Preferably one that might even make it into the kernel with a fully open source driver such as Ralink 2500 chipsets possibly. There have been some attempts at making an open source HAL for the Atheros chip but they do not seem to have come to much as far as I can tell.

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Chewi on :

ChewiThe latest madwifi driver actually works better than ever for me. It is a new codebase to be fair so they probably just need a bit more time.

Anonymous on :

My broadcom mini-PCI card actually started working with the recent upgrades to wpa_supplicant and ndiswrapper

Marcus D. Hanwell on :

Marcus D. HanwellMy Broadcom card always worked, although I never got wpa_supplicant working with Broadcom or Atheros. I certainly wasn't comfortable using a Windows XP 64 bit driver and bought the Atheros miniPCI to have a fully supported wireless card. I think it is clear that the madwifi driver will never make it into the kernel due to the closed source HAL, and it seems less and less likely they will ever make a stable driver...

Atilla Akin on :

Atilla AkinClosed source HAL taints the kernel and couses the security problems.

Marcus D. Hanwell on :

Marcus D. HanwellA closed source HAL certainly does taint the kernel, but does not necessarily cause security problems. I personally would pay more for a fully open source wireless solution as it is just idiotic saying you can't have the source because you might transmit on frequencies you shouldn't. People can hack around software if they want to, if that is important then there should be a hardware lock on what frequencies the chip can use.

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