Re: licensed code - ex Erik's rant

On 05/12/2008, at 11:32 AM, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:

> Chris Collins wrote:
>
>> Have you considered the Wistron CM9 (50mW radio, Atheros based, mini-
>> pci) or the Ubuquiti SR series (400mW radio, Atheros based, mini-pci
>> also).  With the new open source HAL, surely these are a more
>> attractive option?
>
> The "new" part is what worries me. Are these drivers tested and stable
> in real world installations? The RaLink card I tried has drivers in
> the mainline kernel (which don't seem to work with the card I have).
>
> Secondly where can I get these cards in smaller quantities (1 off
> first up and then probably lots of 20-200)? Many suppliers of this
> type of product are interested in sales of less than 10000.

They're very popular in Linux-based AP/router configs.  Yawarra  
resells them and can sell the cards in small quantities - it's where I  
got my CM9 from.

CM9s are $65 each (I think mine cost me $100 about 2 years ago), the  
Ubiquitis are substantially more expensive at $175.

As for the stability of the driver and the HAL - the "new" open-source  
HAL is actually the old binary-only HAL as far as I'm aware, just it's  
finally open source.

The Madwifi driver to drive these cards has been around for a while -  
we've been using them with 2.4 with some success.  I'm lead to believe  
they work better on 2.6 with the newer versions of madwifi-ng.

It's also significant to note that the early MBPs and a bunch of other  
laptops used similar atheros chipset configurations and many linux  
distros have supported them for a while with quite good results.

C.

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