Great! FreeBSD needs help with WiFi!
What is up with all the maintainers stepping down lately?
A number of them have written about their reasons- I can’t speak for the maintainer this article is about but the general sentiment I’ve seen from the ones I’ve been hearing about is that the culture around kernel development is dogwater. Lots of it surrounding refusal to make any space for R4L and shitting on devs working on it, but then also spinning out of that are maintainers likening their quality control responsibilities to being “the thin blue line”.
Should I be worried?
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So two thousands and ten eleven
twelve thirteen fourteen fifteen sixteen seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty twentyone twentytwo twentythree twentyfour twentyfivetwentynine is the year of Linux on desktop!I would’ve figured there were multiple standards and such requiring multiple drivers and maintainers, nonetheless manufacturers doing it themselves.
One maintainer, multiple supported devices
https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/14/youngsters_in_foss/
Read this a few days ago and it feels pretty relevant here.
And this is how I see Linux quickly unravelling and planned insecurities creeping in over the next decade or so.
You’re being dramatic, the world will collapse before this becomes a problem
I used to daily drive Ubuntu some years ago for work/personal use but have been back on Win 10 primarily for the last 4-5 years. I was considering trying to go back due to how much Windows sucks (despite some proprietary software only being available on it) but remembering the trouble I had with some networking/printer drivers and troubleshooting those issues and then seeing this article Is definitely making me reconsider…
I haven’t seen Wireless driver issues in years. Any non arcane devices have drivers and most distros enable most of them in their kernel.
Just built a brand new linux desktop, no wifi dongles work in it.
If I want wifi i need specifically order from this company.
I’m gonna be so sad if this doesn’t work
Debian? Ubuntu?
Because those use old kernels (okay, maybe ubuntu patches in newer versions of in kernel drivers) Recent kernel updates got many new supported wifi chipsets:
https://github.com/morrownr/USB-WiFi/blob/main/home/USB_WiFi_Chipsets.md
I’m talking about the newest version of Mint I installed last month that is useless because it can’t use the drivers for the wifi dongles I own
I had to search that exact list last month and then wait a month for this specific wifi adapter to ship to me when I assumed I could use my brand new realtek usb wifi adapter
If you read through the list you will see the company in the article has the only wifi adapter that claims to actually have support
Imagine, if you had kernel 6.13 (instead of kernel 6.1) you could have just used that dongle…
Mint is u ubuntu based is debian based that uses old kernels.
I think old kernel are fine in server and embedded devices, but not on user desktop.
So I don’t recommend debian based
This is the kind of stuff that makes it really hard to justify using linux.
I was told to use Mint because I was told it would work with modern hardware.
Can I just update the Kernal sonehow? or does that require a reinstall of Mint?
You could install an alternative kernel and install that, but this would most likely fuck your mint install since it is built for that specific major kernel version eg. You only get x.xx.->yy<- updates, rest needs major mint upgrade which they release “late” compared to rolling distros like openSuse Tumbleweed.
Maybe there is an up to date out of tree version of the kernel from lwfinger that you can install, which dongle did you get?
The problems you encounter exist, because of the popular chicken and egg problem, where chip designer ignore linux due to user base and user base is small because of not same chip support as proprietary OSs.
Linux Mint is currently on 6.8, so at least not 6.1, but it’s also not new enough to benefit from all the newly added drivers in 6.13.
Wireless drivers are in a lot better state than they used to be, printer drivers are very dependent on the brand you have.
IME (YMMV) Brother printers seem to consistently work quite well and Epson printers seem to consistently be shit.
They were doing this all by themselves?!
There’s lots of developers contributing to the wifi drivers, there’s just no “lead maintainer” now
The article isn’t entirely clear. I get the impression that the person in question may have been the sole maintainer for some hardware-agnostic parts of the wireless stack (which I’d expect to only need active development when a new standard gets greenlighted; should be bugfixes the rest of the time), co-maintainer of the drivers for some atheros chipsets, and the general oversight/coordination guy, but there are other developers working on specific drivers.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2347/
Btw, you can embedd the image like that:
It will look like that:
Oddly xkcd’s image has no signature or other information identifying the creator.
Post in addition to the link.
Unless you get one of the day’s 10’000, it’ll be recognised by any tech people.
Well, “maintainer” is usually a single person job. They didn’t write all the code or whatever, just were the gatekeeper to what got added and making sure shit works.
So I mean, it’s not great nobody is stepping up, but it’s also not like they magiced up the entirety of linux’s wifi support single handed, either.
That explains many things
Ethernet cable intensifies
I hope they invent wireless ethernet
Maybe we can put it on the open 2.4GHz spectrum and encrypt it with RC4.
Ethernet is a layer 2 protocol. It can run on many different mediums and cable types.
But can it run over wet string, though?
I bet you can run 10base2 over it
