Linux Centrino Driver Update 273
Edy52285 writes "An article on News.com talks about how Intel has been, and still is, dragging on releasing their Linux drivers for Centrino. Intel is reluctant to release its drivers as open source since doing so would reveal secrets about their wireless hardware. Linux in currently unable to take advantage of Centrino's wireless networking devices, without, that is, prying $20 from your thin wallet to buy Linuxant's DriverLoader (discussed in an earlier story). Will Swope (Intel's General Manager of Software and Solutions Group) said in an interview said "What I believe will happen is we will end up having a Linux compatibility driver that is not open source at first, then designing future drivers in such a way that they are open source but will not expose intellectual property," Intel seem to be taking its time on releasing the drivers, and even in the article, there is a lack of any commitment on a date or under what conditions the drivers will be released." Also, someone pointed out that it's worth checking out ndiswrapper for the driver.
Re:Secrets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which brings up a good point... (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't this why Stallman insists on running only Free software?
And precompiled? (Score:5, Insightful)
Alvie
Simple answer, Don't buy nutrino laptops! (Score:5, Insightful)
will drive the market. This is also what we would need to do as soon as the PC gets locked up with
the new Award Bios. Demand has to be so low that it
will just about drive the home PC vendors out of business. then and only then DRM will be dropped.
I'm stocking up on some hardware now, that way if my
desktop or firewall does die, I can build a new one.
The one language they understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Until they have a proper Linux driver, buy an AMD based system instead.
Who are they hiding this from? (Score:3, Insightful)
Other chipmakers, I presume. So that nobody could produce an alternative wireless card to go with a Pentium M processor or some such.
But wouldn't anyone who's capable of designing and producing his own chipset be able to dissect the Centrino architecture and reengineer it, either by careful blackbox testing or by actually taking a microscope and looking at the chips? Am I way off mark here?
But if it's not other chipmakers they are protecting this from, if it actually is a software issue, then they are simply dancing to the tune of Microsoft due to whatever behind-the-scenes agreement they have with them.
Re:Yeah, that sucks (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed.
However, when I decided to purchase a decent wireless card [buffalotech.com] , I would've liked to have been able to use it under Linux without paying extra. When you spend nearly UKP50 on the card, a discount on the Linuxant driver [linuxant.com] (at the very least!) would have been a nice gesture.
Re:ndiswrapper (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Don't give specifications away
2. Tech-savvy high-end linux users don't buy your product
3. ???
4. Profit???
Re:Secrets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, that sucks for them. Perhaps they should have built a real wireless device rather than taking away CPU time for something that is best handled by a seperate device.
This revealed, do most linux users even want a Centrino-based laptop?
Much ado about... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a freaken' wireless chipset and a power efficient CPU. It's not like no one else makes them.
not so bad (Score:2, Insightful)
So in other words, Intel is considering open source projects in the future. Isn't this news to get a little excited about?
How often in the past have companies brushed aside Linux? Many, many times. It gives me a bit of a fuzzy feeling inside to see guys like this being honest and forthright towards the Linux community.
I know in the short term it would be great if they would give us a bit more respect, but look a little further down the road...big companies are feeling pressure to do things the open-source way.
Re:Secrets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And precompiled? (Score:5, Insightful)
If Intel would step up and prove that they support Linux, it would be a huge boost for Linux and extra appreciation for Intel from the Linux community. Even if they release a beta for Linux, you know that a large portion of users will actively assist in the testing and send in bug reports.
Re:Simple solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:ndiswrapper (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Secrets? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who are they hiding this from? (Score:2, Insightful)
A hardware company (chip manufacturer, global player) would have much more incentive and the necessary financial means to achieve something like that.
Re:Secrets? (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel's entire strategy over the last 10 years has been precisely to move as many functions as possible into the CPU. This enables them to justify selling processors with far more horsepower than anybody needs for word processing or browsing, and it lets them assert control and influence over a much larger fraction of the hardware market.
That's why they keep adding more multimedia-oriented units to their architecture; it's also why they designed the P4's memory architecture to be mainly good at streaming blocks of video data.
Their strategy has been relatively successful up to now. There's just no way that they would design a totally stand-alone wireless solution to be tightly marketed with their CPUs.
In fact, just from the Centrino marketing material, you'd get the impression that the CPU itself is handling the wireless functions. Perhaps they plan to move that logic into a future mobile CPU chip.
Ohh spare cycles, yummy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Those spare cycles could do something better than doing the hardwares work. Microsoft wants to have it all in windows if they can. That way they can tie the whole platform to windows cementing the monopoly on desktops. MS and Intel have had their jousts and Intel have always folded under the pressure. Intels project to make hardware more platform agnostic was stopped by MS who saw a threat to their Wintel Symbios.
There is nothing stopping eg. device drivers from being implemented much lower down like in the actual hardware, talking only in pre standardized APIs. Whats stopping that great innovation that would put a stop to driver problems and make it much more easy to develop new products?
Guess once!
Re:Secrets? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Which brings up a good point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Intel has made it very clear when they announced the Centrino chipset they would support Linux.
Well they haven't, their video chipset has a broken bios and no documentation and their wireless chipset has no documentation.
For the videochip there is some binary only stuff that only works with a very limited set of kernels and X versions.
For the wireless chip there still isn't even a driver.
The promises are getting dated and the hardware is getting dated. The only thing new comming out of intel is PR bullshit.
Jeroen
Re:And thus... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you spend obscene amounts of money on an Apple laptop just so you can run Linux on it? For a group of people that complain so much about the "Microsoft Tax" and actually think that it raises the price of your computer by the retail cost of Windows, Slashdotters sure as hell don't have a problem paying hundreds more for an Apple laptop just so they can be spared the agony of seeing Windows boot up once. Baffling.
Re:Secrets? (Score:4, Insightful)
Those guys are probably the least interested. Their engineers know exactly how to make similar devices. The only ones that might be interested are some third world country's bootleg industry. And they can/will reverse engineer the devices anyhow.
All these "Oh, we can't release the specs, that would reveal our secrets!", are pretty full of it. There are very, very few hardware/software solutions that aren't widely known. It gets really silly when companies such as NVidia refuse to release info to the XFree community, due to their hardware secrets. For heaven's sake! Even the insides of such (more or less) proprietary devices as the PS2, the GameCube, and so on are well known...
Fiddling with device settings (Score:3, Insightful)
Intel doesn't want to risk being associated with these kinds of things (and you know if they released an open source driver, someone would).
This still doesn't however totally explain their not releasing a closed-source driver...
have we seen this before? (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't anybody learn from the WinPrinter and WinModem farces?
software radio (Score:2, Insightful)
Atheros' ended up releasing a binary-only driver... kernel-tainting and all. If the Centrino radio controllers are also software-based, you can expect a binary-only driver as well.
Re:The one language they understand (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple must just love these guys (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe it is because I'm not a market droid, but what good is a product to a company when they are too afraid to sell it?