Might move to NetBSD

[nslay]

I might be moving my laptop to NetBSD for wireless driver stability.  NetBSD 4.0 is nearing its release, adding WPA and various other features that I would like.
The iwi driver, and well, any driver written by Damien (who is no longer working on the drivers) hold non-sleep locks in sleeping threads.  The code is massive, I printed out some 60 or 70 pages so it looks like finding a needle in a hay stack.  I might give patching it a crack, but it doesn't look promising.  I advise anyone with Intel Pro Wireless cards and Ralink Wireless cards to avoid FreeBSD until these issues are settled.

I recently setup a NetBSD test machine (one among many P2P VLAN test machines) and was quite impressed with it ... it has pretty extensive hardware support too ... its even got a driver for an Electronic Oboe.  How bizarre?

See:
http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=kern/89926
http://www.netbsd.org/Changes/changes-4.0.html

[Joe]

Say, I bought a Dell Inspiron notebook, standard machine. What would be the steps needed to get Wifi up and going with say, Gaim and Firefox? I really don't want to run Windows on a limited-power machine, and the only reason I use it on the beastly desktop is for gaming.

[nslay]

Say, I bought a Dell Inspiron notebook, standard machine. What would be the steps needed to get Wifi up and going with say, Gaim and Firefox? I really don't want to run Windows on a limited-power machine, and the only reason I use it on the beastly desktop is for gaming.

On FreeBSD or ... ?

[Newby]

Joe would be lost on a BSD machine.

[iago]

Say, I bought a Dell Inspiron notebook, standard machine. What would be the steps needed to get Wifi up and going with say, Gaim and Firefox? I really don't want to run Windows on a limited-power machine, and the only reason I use it on the beastly desktop is for gaming.

Assuming they use a normal card, you:
- Install Linux/BSD
- Install or load drivers
- Have fun

If I was to buy a laptop, I'd make sure to get Intel Centrino.  Centrino comes with a standard wireless card (ipw2200), which has opensource drivers (http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net).  I've gotten my Centrino laptop's wireless going without a whole lot of trouble on both Linux and FreeBSD.

[nslay]

Joe would be lost on a BSD machine.

I don't know, Joe seems able enough.  I think *BSD or Gentoo are great systems to start with because they force you to read the handbook and gain a real understanding for the system.

[Sidoh]

- Install or load drivers

That's where I got stuck.

Linux (of course) with a 2.6.8+ kernel [link]. See README.ipw2200 for information on specific options required to be enabled in the kernel.

[nslay]

- Install or load drivers

That's where I got stuck.

Linux (of course) with a 2.6.8+ kernel [link]. See README.ipw2200 for information on specific options required to be enabled in the kernel.

I'm not impressed with Linux's driver infrastructure ... and I'm especially disgusted by hotplugging and ALSA (having written a MIDI ALSA driver).
I can't believe driver and application authors can put up with Linux.