One disadvantage of this chipset is that it doesn't support monitor mode, at least with the Linux driver: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Linux.Wireless.drivers.... In other words, Kismet, WEPCrack, and AirSnort won't work with this card. Granted, this is not an issue for most people. Leo Mauler wrote:

You're absolutely correct from an idealistic viewpoint.

...

From the "I've only got $25 to spend on a wireless card and Hawking Technologies has a $24.99 802.11b wireless card using the RTL8180 chipset" perspective, ndiswrapper makes some sense. :(

One might as well try to argue that one shouldn't use WINE and WineX in Linux, thereby killing off the Linux die-hard gamers market and causing many people who use proprietary Windows-only apps to simply stay with Windows. Ndiswrapper at least means that the underlying OS is Linux, not Windows.

--- Jonathan Hutchins <hutchins@tarcanfel.org> wrote:

...

On Saturday 30 October 2004 04:47 pm, Leo Mauler wrote:

...

Using ndiswrapper to make a RealTek 8180 wireless card work properly. Rather than bother with the proprietary drivers for Linux, use this one instead.

I thought that "ndiswrapper" used the propietary drivers relesed by evil companies that don't support Open Source? I thought the point was to take the card back to the store, tell them it's no good if it doesn't supprot Linux, and buy something else.

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-----Original Message----- From: kclug-bounces@kclug.org [mailto:kclug-bounces@kclug.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Hutchins Sent: Saturday, October 30, 2004 7:51 PM To: kclug@kclug.org Subject: Re: ndiswrapper

On Saturday 30 October 2004 06:42 pm, Leo Mauler wrote:

...

One might as well try to argue that one shouldn't use WINE and WineX in Linux...

Completely different situation. These allow you to use legacy software you already own and already have data in. I found an inexpensive wireless card with a linux driver, at CompUSA. There's no real reason to buy one that's incompatible.

Well... if CompUSA is the only place you can get such a thing (yeah, I know it's not, but this fire needs some gasoline!), that would be reason enough for me. I, for one, haven't shopped in that sh*thole of a store for well over two years now - and haven't once in that period of time picked up an item marked $39.99 in large print, only to find at the cash register it's $62.50. Oh and the people are abhorrent. I dunno which is worse, dealing with them or receiving a prostate exam and a root canal simultaneously without anesthesia. Tvunq!

On Saturday 30 October 2004 10:14 pm, Steven Hildreth wrote:

Can you supply the make/model of this (the WIC you reference sold with Linux drivers)? I am looking into several.

What I have in an SMC 2435W running the open source acx100 drivers. I don't recalll the price - it was a lot more than you'd pay for a 22Mbps 802.11b+ card today, but it was the best deal for price/performance at the time. I did take one other card that was, I think, the same price, back to the store because I couldn't locate Linux drivers for it.

On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 07:51:19PM -0500, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

On Saturday 30 October 2004 06:42 pm, Leo Mauler wrote:

...

One might as well try to argue that one shouldn't use WINE and WineX in Linux...

Completely different situation. These allow you to use legacy software you already own and already have data in. I found an inexpensive wireless card with a linux driver, at CompUSA. There's no real reason to buy one that's incompatible.

Perhaps a better comparison is to say that one should also refuse to use any piece of hardware for which the source code of the firmware on any kind of on-board ROM device is not free-as-in-free-software free. That comparison is apt because, so far as I understand, hardware manufacturers are forgoing putting firmware on ROM devices much any more, and instead that firmware is what is being downloaded from the proprietary-only drivers. It's a bit like flashing the ROM of the hardware, but instead of being ROM, it's on-board RAM, and instead of being flashed, it's just loaded up like any other data. So, under this comparison, one wouldn't be able to use most hardware, including most motherboards. Granted, there are now open source BIOSes available, but I expect only the most extreme are arguing that you shouldn't buy a motherboard unless it comes loaded with one of these or is known to work with them. Finally, taking this completely to the extreme, one might argue that in order to encourage the industry to shed its proprietary ways, one should only use designs developed by the Open Cores project (http://www.opencores.org) and produced in fabs (are there any) that use only openly-available (those on which all patents have expired?) fab techniques. Seriously, it's a continuum. It's better to use as much free stuff as you can, but it's more important (or less delusionally ridiculous) to create a market for free stuff than it is to think you're going to make the market for non-free stuff disappear by refusing to buy or use something. -- Joe

On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 10:30:01AM -0500, Jonathan Hutchins wrote:

The point is that you do have a choice, and you should exercise that choice by supporting hardware that is supported by and that supports "FOSS".

No, the point is that choice often isn't that black-and-white. When, in the limit, choice does reduce to the simple case you outline, where the only consideration is which wireless device to buy, I agree with you: One should support that kind of hardware. But oftentimes hardware purchase decisions are an aggregation of several other factors which are weighed against each other, and purchase of non-supported hardware happens as a byproduct--consider the wide variety of non-supported or poorly-supported winmodems that are bundled, without option, on laptops these days, almost without much choice. We buy those, perhaps, in spite of the modems in them. I'd be fain to reject a laptop that had a non-supported winmodem, which I would probably little use even were it supported, if every other feature of the system were perfectly aligned with my preferences, including support for/from free software. Or, sometimes, the purchase is a fait accompli, and the only challenge (for instance, in an installfest scenario) is, given the hardware, get as much free software running on it as possible. So, in that light, the availability of ndiswrappers, though not ideologically pristine, can be a net gain for freedom. -- Joe