Michael Lotz, of Tracker.NewFS, SVG, Haiku USB, Qemu, and countless other cool-things-to-have fame has checked in Haiku’s first wireless network driver, for the Intel Pro Wireless 2100. This chipset, which inhabits nearly all early Centrino-badged devices, is amongst the more common wireless hardware found in recent computers. It works on r5 as well.
Any chance in their being support for us Broadcom WiFi card users? Maybe a BeOS/Haiku version of NDis Wrapper, perhaps?
Maybe a BeOS/Haiku version of NDis Wrapper, perhaps?
There have been some musings about someone porting the ndis wrapper – but AFAIK, nobody has seriously stepped up to the plate to attempt it.
Oh that would be excellent if they would do that!
“Oh that would be excellent if they would do that!”
ndiswrapper is GPL’d and Haiku tries to avoid using GPL’d code as much a possible.
True, Haiku is going to sufficient measures to avoid using GPL’d code as much as possible, if not entirely, for the official code.
This does not stop someone else doing the required work outside of the project to use the GPL’d code, however.
AFAIK Haiku can be distributed under GPL as well
When it comes to drivers, GPL isn’t outside the realm of Haiku. Since drivers depend on the kernel and other parts of the OS, and not the other way around, there is really no political disadvantage to using GPL’d driver code.
There are already GPL drivers and other code in the tree.
/me prays for atmel
What about FBSD’s Project Evil? I thought that one was developed in-house, i.e. BSD-licensed code.
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Danger hiptop 2.0; U; AvantGo 3.2)
Couldn’t someone just make a BeOS/Haiku compatible version and simply post it on a site like BeBits (is that site still working?)? It doesn’t have to officially be from Haiku….or does it?
Yes, you could. However, if an essential part of the system (an audio/video codec, a driver, a filesystem, …) has to be downloaded separately, the first impression of a simple and hassle-free desktop suffers. Ease/simplicity/speed/size vis-a-vis Linux/Windows/MacOSX is important to get people hooked on Haiku. But of course, a separate download is better than nothing at all.
Lots of computer literate people can potentially get around the problem of a missing network driver, downloading the appropriate one by some other means, but if you’re totally new to Haiku…
* You might be uncertain as to why the net doesn’t work. Whether the driver is missing or the error is of some other nature. Linux, Windows, MacOS X (and to some degree the BSDs) come with a lot of drivers, out of the box or as online updates. I believe that most of the intended Haiku audience (beyond early adopters) will be unaccustomed to thinking about device drivers. People expect more now.
* You might be unaware of the BeOS history and backwards compatibility of Haiku and of the primary site for BeOS downloads, http://www.BeBits.com, which is not yet explicitly Haiku oriented. If you do find a device driver that might work, with multiple versions, for BeOS, Zeta, Dano, BeOS+BONE, … Newcomers will be confused.
* You might not know the exact chip used on that specific hardware of yours, and drivers usually target chips rather than specific models of a product. If you’re lucky the driver you need provides a list of supported products.
I had almost forgotten this great site:
http://www.bedrivers.com/
I suppose Haiku will bundle any essential and compatible BeOS R5 3’rd party components that have not yet been replaced, if these are allowed to be distributed freely.
Edited 2006-10-20 09:17
I think the issue would be more of people not being able to install it on the PCs becoz they are missing some core drivers to do the install the first place. For example your system requires a certain kind of IDE or SCSI driver not included in the OS release. The driver is available but you will need to be able to boot up the system to install which you can’t because your IDE/SCSI chipset is not supported. This chicken and egg situation would be the most frustrating.
-Ad
Wow, thanks! Perhaps I could upload my broadcom drivers, or would that be some sort of violation?
I hate to put a damper on your enthusiasm, but the network device drivers for Windows are useless to Haiku as long as there’s no NDIS wrapper for them in Haiku. If someone makes such a thing, by adapting the one from Linux or the one from FreeBSD, distribution of repackaged(?) device drivers for Windows may still not be entirely legal. It might be a violation of the EULAs or copyright. I don’t know, I’m not a lawyer. :[
I suppose though that Haiku, inc could, if time and resources permit, talk to hardware makers and ask permission to bundle their binaries meant for Windows.
Edited 2006-10-20 17:31
So much for that then.
A related distribution issue is that of binary firmware, which a lot of cards need these days. These blobs, as some call them, are loaded onto the card by the device driver (unless I’ve got it all wrong).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob
While Haiku now has a perfectly good driver, open source and all, ready for inclusion on the Haiku CD, I’m not sure whether it’s possible to also distribute the firmware and thus get the “first-boot and it-just-works” situation. But, IANAL, so perhaps it is indeed possible for an ISV (Haiku) to distribute the firmware. Some legalese, for interested parties:
http://ipw2100.sourceforge.net/firmware.php?fid=4
For the record, I don’t mind firmware as long as it’s open or at the very least it’s got a no-nonsense license that permits free distribution and does not require end-user license exposure.
BTW, here’s some info on the aforementioned NDIS wrapper:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NdisWrapper
Edited 2006-10-21 08:56