Realtek RTL8187B Driver in Karmic

[Tim Gardner]

Carl J. Richell wrote:
> ----- "Tim Gardner" <tim.gardner at canonical.com> wrote:
>> Tim Gardner wrote:
>>> Carl J. Richell wrote:
>>>>> Tim?
>>>> Hi Pete and Tim. Is it possible to include this driver? The Realtek
>> RTL8187B is popular in netbooks - including our own.
>>>>> The kernel is in freeze now so it will be difficult.
>>>> My understanding is that kernel freeze occurs Oct. 15th.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> Carl
>>>>
>>> There is already support for this USB device in the mainline kernel. In
>>> fact, drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x has support for more devices then the
>>> OEM driver you attached in a previous email.
>>>
>>> rtg
>>>
>> Scratch that last statement. The driver in mainline has support for the
>> _exact_ same set of devices. My grep accidentally included some
>> Realtek devices in staging.
>>
>> rtg
>> -- 
>> Tim Gardner tim.gardner at canonical.com
> 
> The mainline driver barely works. Drops connections and range is only 30'. The
> OEM driver I provided extends range to 120' with a solid connection.
> 
> Carl

Have you tried working with the upstream wireless developers? Perhaps
they can pluck the bits of wisdom from the OEM driver that will improve
the mainline driver performance.

The devs in question (from the mainline driver file
drivers/net/wireless/rtl818x/rtl8187_dev.c) are:

 * The driver was extended to the RTL8187B in 2008 by:
 *      Herton Ronaldo Krzesinski <herton at mandriva.com.br>
 *      Hin-Tak Leung <htl10 at users.sourceforge.net>
 *      Larry Finger <Larry.Finger at lwfinger.net>

Assuming, of course, that there are no licensing issues with the OEM
driver. I suggest that you also Cc linux-wireless at vger.kernel.org.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at canonical.com