[RFC] Inclusion of RT2860 driver

Stefan Bader stefan.bader at canonical.com
Tue Sep 9 23:16:00 BST 2008


https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/210725

The above bug asks for inclusion of the rt2860 driver into Ubuntu (Hardy LUM or
at least Intrepid). The rt2xx project does not support this HW but as indicated
in the bug report the latest driver provided by ralinktech is now working.
I went through all the pieces mentioned in the report and looked at the changes
on top of the current driver on the ralinktech web page.
There are 4 patches, 2 cover compatibility issues and 1 just prevents some
unwanted installation. The remaining patch adds a wpa supplicant special case
with comments that this is for EEEPC (so I take it this will probably a major
users base).
The required firmware seems to be distributable to me (at least there is a
license file which allows distribution).
The most uncommon part probably is that the driver wants some configuration
data (a file) in /etc/Wireless/...

The question now is whether we want to provide that driver as a part of the
kernel package (in the ubuntu tree) or as a separate dkms package. This is
probably mainly a question of policies. Is it desired to have an additional
firmware in the kernel package? Should the kernel package create files in /etc?
A dkms package would make the driver simpler to update without the need to
release a new kernel package. The downside might be that smaller systems
(available file system space and CPU power) might not want the compile overhead
(I am not sure how well the EEEPC would fare there).
What are the thoughts on this?

Regards,
Stefan

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When all other means of communication fail, try words!





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