Can I replace the card with something Fedora support ?
Yes, there are cards supported by entirely free drivers. If you can find one which uses the ZyDAS ZD1211 chipset, that's a good one, I have one of those and it works very well with the free zd1211rw driver.
How would this be supported ?
The hardware is a HP-compac 6715b, with network chipset from Broadcom. In some previous release of Fedora, I tried to get it working with Bcm43xx, but had to compile my own driver. Something I failed doing, some libraries or headers was not in the release.Frequent updates of packages drowned me.
Adam Williamson wrote: - " wl is a proprietary module and is not part of Fedora, hence your problem is unlikely to be addressed on this list :) "
I was unaware that Broadcom had any driver for Linux. I was certain I was running some precompiled b43-module. To patch/compile - make your own version, is too demanding. And your left on some different page then the rest.
So, with the other chipset, would you get wireless "out-of-the-box" with Fedora ?
//ARNE
On Wed, 2009-04-29 at 04:28 -0700, Arne Chr. Jorgensen wrote:
Can I replace the card with something Fedora support ?
Yes, there are cards supported by entirely free drivers. If you can find one which uses the ZyDAS ZD1211 chipset, that's a good one, I have one of those and it works very well with the free zd1211rw driver.
So, with the other chipset, would you get wireless "out-of-the-box" with Fedora ?
Yes. With a ZD1211 chipset-based adapter wifi just works out of the box, no configuration required besides clicking on NetworkManager to pick the access point and enter the security password if necessary.
There's probably other chips that work this easily, but ZD1211 is the one I've personally had the best experience with. I have several other wireless chips that work, but they all require drivers from rpmfusion or firmware or something.
Arne Chr. Jorgensen wrote:
Can I replace the card with something Fedora support ?
Yes, there are cards supported by entirely free drivers. If you can find one which uses the ZyDAS ZD1211 chipset, that's a good one, I have one of those and it works very well with the free zd1211rw driver.
How would this be supported ?
The hardware is a HP-compac 6715b, with network chipset from Broadcom. In some previous release of Fedora, I tried to get it working with Bcm43xx, but had to compile my own driver. Something I failed doing, some libraries or headers was not in the release.Frequent updates of packages drowned me.
Adam Williamson wrote:
- " wl is a proprietary module and is not part of Fedora, hence your
problem is unlikely to be addressed on this list :) "
I was unaware that Broadcom had any driver for Linux. I was certain I was running some precompiled b43-module. To patch/compile - make your own version, is too demanding. And your left on some different page then the rest.
So, with the other chipset, would you get wireless "out-of-the-box" with Fedora ?
If "replace your hardware" is an acceptable solution, you would, at least to the extent that any recent version using NetworkManager supports wireless. Another alternative is to use the ndiswrapper to run the Windows drivers, although people who have big budgets will tell you that's a bad thing.
Arne Chr. Jorgensen wrote:
The hardware is a HP-compac 6715b, with network chipset from Broadcom. In some previous release of Fedora, I tried to get it working with Bcm43xx, but had to compile my own driver. Something I failed doing, some libraries or headers was not in the release.Frequent updates of packages drowned me.
Adam Williamson wrote:
- " wl is a proprietary module and is not part of Fedora, hence your
problem is unlikely to be addressed on this list :) "
I was unaware that Broadcom had any driver for Linux. I was certain I was running some precompiled b43-module. To patch/compile - make your own version, is too demanding. And your left on some different page then the rest.
The b43 driver is part of Fedora. You need to follow the firmware installation instructions to get it to work. (Basically, you have to download a specific version of the Broadcom proprietary driver (I think they expect a MIPS binary from OpenWRT, not the x86 version you're using, the instructions give the exact link) and run b43-fwcutter on it (which will extract the firmware out of the binary).)
Kevin Kofler
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Adam Williamson -
Arne Chr. Jorgensen -
Bill Davidsen -
Kevin Kofler