Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Andrew Walrond]

Is anybody liasing, asisting or pressuring Intel wrt centrino wireless 
drivers?

It seems to me that it could have been written at least 20 times over during 
the time they've supposedly been in development.

This quote from back in March annoys me somewhat:

"The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker is running Linux drivers in its labs, but 
whether or not those drivers make it out of the labs depends on customer 
demand, said Scott McLaughlin, an Intel spokesman"

Well, I am demanding, and my patience is running very thin. And Amd look to be 
releasing 64bit mobile parts soon, and appear to be very linux friendly. Am I 
the only one getting annoyed about this?

Can anybody put my mind at rest, or suggest reasons why Intel may be reluctant 
to release the drivers?

Andrew Walrond

Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Felipe Alfaro Solana]

On Mon, 2003-11-24 at 10:50, Andrew Walrond wrote:

> Well, I am demanding, and my patience is running very thin. And Amd look to be 
> releasing 64bit mobile parts soon, and appear to be very linux friendly. Am I 
> the only one getting annoyed about this?

No, you're not alone... Although I don't have a Centrino-powered machine
at the moment, the way Intel is behaving is stopping for me for even
thinking on buying a new laptop replacement.

I think this kind of disinterest on Linux Centrino drivers is motivated
by the fact that Microsoft has a strong relationship with Intel and
since, like it or not, Windows has 90% of the desktop market, Intel
doesn't see the motivation to spend a few hundred dollars in building
the driver themselves.

However, they could at least release the documentation. Since the driver
is, I think, going to be GPL'ed, they don't have to fear releasing the
internals of Centrino.

Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Christian Axelsson]

Andrew Walrond wrote:

> Well, I am demanding, and my patience is running very thin. And Amd look to be 
> releasing 64bit mobile parts soon, and appear to be very linux friendly. Am I 
> the only one getting annoyed about this?

Try driverloader (works fine, costs $20) or ndiswrapper (dont work atm, 
under active development).

> Can anybody put my mind at rest, or suggest reasons why Intel may be reluctant 
> to release the drivers?

Lazy? Having other priorities?

-- 
Christan Axelsson
smiler@lanil.mine.nu

Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Wichert Akkerman]

Previously Christian Axelsson wrote:
> Andrew Walrond wrote:
> >Can anybody put my mind at rest, or suggest reasons why Intel may be 
> >reluctant to release the drivers?
> 
> Lazy? Having other priorities?

Legal issues as discussed on this list a few months ago. Please see the
list archives for details.

Wichert.

-- 
Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net>    It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/                   It is hard to make things simple.

Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Andrew Walrond]

On Monday 24 Nov 2003 11:21 am, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>
> Legal issues as discussed on this list a few months ago. Please see the
> list archives for details.

I assume you are referring to the problems associated with users messing with 
power settings etc. I fail to see how this stops intel releasing a binary 
driver ?

Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Wichert Akkerman]

Previously Andrew Walrond wrote:
> I assume you are referring to the problems associated with users messing with 
> power settings etc. I fail to see how this stops intel releasing a binary 
> driver ?

It doesn't, but with tools like ndiswrapper available they don't need to
either.

Wichert.

-- 
Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net>    It is simple to make things.
http://www.wiggy.net/                   It is hard to make things simple.

Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Marcos D. Marado Torres]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi there,

Well, I own a centrino laptop and that pisses me off too, but hey, they have
the power to do that, and I have to hang with this laptop, so...

In the meanwhile, we have LinuxAnt who developed a proggie that emulates
Windoze drivers to Linux... They say it supports our wireless card, I saw
people successfully use it, and many more that can't (as myself). It sure can
communicate with the card, so you can give it a try...

Hoping that I've someway helped,

Mind Booster Noori

On Mon, 24 Nov 2003, Andrew Walrond wrote:

> Is anybody liasing, asisting or pressuring Intel wrt centrino wireless
> drivers?
>
> It seems to me that it could have been written at least 20 times over during
> the time they've supposedly been in development.
>
> This quote from back in March annoys me somewhat:
>
> "The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker is running Linux drivers in its labs, but
> whether or not those drivers make it out of the labs depends on customer
> demand, said Scott McLaughlin, an Intel spokesman"
>
> Well, I am demanding, and my patience is running very thin. And Amd look to be
> releasing 64bit mobile parts soon, and appear to be very linux friendly. Am I
> the only one getting annoyed about this?
>
> Can anybody put my mind at rest, or suggest reasons why Intel may be reluctant
> to release the drivers?
>
> Andrew Walrond
>
> -
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> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>


- --
==================================================
Marcos Daniel Marado Torres AKA Mind Booster Noori
/"\               http://student.dei.uc.pt/~marado
\ /                       marado@student.dei.uc.pt
 X   ASCII Ribbon Campaign
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Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[bill davidsen]

In article <200311240950.28769.andrew@walrond.org>,
Andrew Walrond  <andrew@walrond.org> wrote:
| Is anybody liasing, asisting or pressuring Intel wrt centrino wireless 
| drivers?
| 
| It seems to me that it could have been written at least 20 times over during 
| the time they've supposedly been in development.

Have you looked at the Intel2100 driver linked from TuxMobil? Not ready
for prime time yet, but someone is working on the problem. For that
metter, *is* someone bugging Intel? I'd hate to have them say "no one
asked," but stranger things have happened.
| 
| This quote from back in March annoys me somewhat:
| 
| "The Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker is running Linux drivers in its labs, but 
| whether or not those drivers make it out of the labs depends on customer 
| demand, said Scott McLaughlin, an Intel spokesman"
| 
| Well, I am demanding, and my patience is running very thin. And Amd look to be 
| releasing 64bit mobile parts soon, and appear to be very linux friendly. Am I 
| the only one getting annoyed about this?

At the moment the Pentium-M seems to be about the longest life per pound
going, which makes it desirable when life is more important than
computing power. If a few hours is long enough there are lots of choices.
| 
| Can anybody put my mind at rest, or suggest reasons why Intel may be reluctant 
| to release the drivers?

They may not be in a state to release. The Intel web site clearly says
they are under development, before we decide Intel doesn't love us it
would be nice to get an answer on this from one of the Intel folks who
read this list.

It could be releated to the state of APM/ACPI/suspend in 2.6, I think
"immature" is realistic compared to 2.4, a lot of work has gone into
it, but if the 2100 needs ACPI support, that might be an issue. It
might not keep Intel from doing a 2.4 driver, though.

-- 
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.

Re: Intel centrino drivers being withheld?

[Pavel Machek]

Hi!

> At the moment the Pentium-M seems to be about the longest life per pound
> going, which makes it desirable when life is more important than
> computing power. If a few hours is long enough there are lots of choices.

Really? I thought transmeta's run longer. And there were
some 386s running on 2 AA batteries. That should have best
"hours/kilograms" ratio. --p