Wondering if my wifi driver will be supported on 7.
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Oi!
I'm wondering if my wifi driver will have support on 7. Also, if there is soemething I can do for my wifi driver to work with Trisquel/Free Software, what is it? Thanks!
Here's my driver: https://h-node.org/wifi/view/en/1370/Ralink-corp--RT3290-Wireless-802-11n-1T-1R-PCIe
It's not drivers that are the problem. It's the firmware. This is a common misconception that it's all about drivers. :) Unless someone makes a free firmware for it (and I don't think anyone's working on such a project but I'd love to be wrong) the status isn't changing any time soon.
Maybe the FSF could setup a crowdfunding effort to write free firmware for various devices. This could be interfaced with h-node and willing distros. This way people could easily chip in to free software development. And firmware hackers would get employed.
I guess the feasibility of such a scheme depends on what kind of money we're talking about, I have no idea. On the other hand I believe the amount of users that would like to see a free firmware is not small. Of course not everybody has the same device so that will splinter the field a bit.
Thanks guys! I'm with free firmware writers to get employed to write free firmware. Hopefully 7 supports already has free firmware for my wifi driver.
There are no changes in what free firmware is included in Trisquel 7.
There are two ways to replace firmware: reverse engineer it and write an
independent free replacement, or convince the vendor to release its
source under a free license (needs a business argument like a large
order if the firmware is freed, needs interested developers in and
outside the company who will do the needed technical work). OpenFWWF
used the first method on old Broadcom firmware, ThinkPenguin used the
second one for AR9271 firmware.
Ralink and Realtek have easiest firmwares to reverse engineer, while no
one did it yet.
Thanks for the info! I don't know where to start on asking the vendors for them to release the source code. I'd gladly help to those who would be willing help me ask the vendor for source code.
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