[SoaS] rt2x00 firmware

[Bernie Innocenti]

On Thu, 2010-01-07 at 11:17 +0000, Peter Robinson wrote:
> That might well be the case but it is also the case for just about all
> wireless drivers including the one used in the XO. What wireless
> chipset would you recommend that has a completely open firmware that
> is also widely available.

On my Lenovo X200s, I installed an Atheros AR5008 mini PCIe card, which
supports 802.11n and doesn't require any firmware at all.

Since all the wifi stack is implemented in software by the kernel, you
also get a number of cool features, including 802.11s (mesh), AP mode
and even dual-AP mode (Fonera style).

As an added bonus, my OS is now 100% free of any firmware blobs. I could
uninstall all the firmware packages from Fedora and everything still
works perfectly. There's probably some binary code (or data) for the
Intel GM45 GPU, but I didn't bother checking.

As a side note, I had to reflash my BIOS with a hacked version that
would not check every PCI ID against a whitelist of devices "supported"
by Lenovo. My laptop also came with a complimentary TPM chip, but
luckily Lenovo is not (yet) using it to block their customers from
flashing an unauthorized BIOS. Don't you love DRM? :-)

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/