Replacing Intel WiFi Link 5100 AGN with free alternative on Lenovo X200.
I'm switching over to a fully free distro from Debian. I hope to be running my Lenovo X200 with Libreboot and Trisquel within the next few weeks. I ran the Trisquel ISO on my Lenovo X200 to test things out and discovered that it doesn't work with my wireless card. Unfortunately wireless is a necessity for me so I won't be able to make the switch until I can resolve this issue.
Investigation lead me here and I have a few questions.
1. Is there a free driver for this now? I'm guessing not, but it has been a few years since that forum thread.
2. If not, I'm willing to buy hardware, but this is the first time I've really attempted to do any hardware work so I'm looking for some guidance. I looked at this and this and I'm not sure how to evaluate which I should get, or how to install it if I do. I'm guessing I should go with the second because that's what they used here.
the procedure isn't difficult, an occasion to learn, on libreboot.org there are guides to do it if i don't remeber wrong, you can search on the web, there are guided step by step procedure...
buy Atheros AR5B95, AR9285 chipset, it is easily available, i'm in EU bought one for less than 10 euro in second hand web.
Hope you can use your x200 fully free
Yep, I am following the libreboot.org guides to install libreboot.
I got the Atheros AR9285. I'll try to report back with a walkthrough of the installation. Ideally computers would come with free-software-compatible hardware, but making it easy to install free-software-compatible hardware is a good step toward that.
You can buy a Wifi adapter at ThinkPenguin or at Tehnoetic:
To the best of my knowledge, no other vendor guarantees that its hardware works with Linux-libre.
could you not use Ethernet?(i don’t own a x200 but i assume it would have Ethernet)
It has ethernet but that doesn't meet any of my needs.