Broadcom would like to announce the initial release of a fully-open
Linux driver for it's latest generation of 11n chipsets.

Dell knows it won't happen overnight, but along side wanting to ship audio/video codecs, Intel Wireless 80.211N support for Linux, Broadcom Wireless for Linux, and being able to ship notebooks and desktops with Compiz Fusion enabled, Dell would like to see improved ATI Linux drivers.

Could this be the badly needed 'fix' that we need in the wireless world with regard to Linux?

Linux overcame most of its former driver woes years ago except for one noticeable exception: Wi-Fi drivers. While many Wi-Fi cards and chipsets were Linux friendly, two major Wi-Fi chipset vendors, Atheros and Broadcom, kept their drivers proprietary. Now, things are changing. Atheros has released a true open-source driver for its latest 802.11n chipsets.

[...] a few wireless network chip manufacturers have claimed that they cannot release their hardware documentation or firmware interface documentation to open source driver developers because FCC regulations forbid it. That excuse is no longer valid.

Ubuntu comes with a nice application called “Hardware Drivers” (a.k.a. jockey-gtk) for installing proprietary drivers for wireless cards and other devices that lack open-source support. This is great, except when your only connection to the Internet is wireless and you have no way to download the driver or firmware you need. Here’s why this situation should change.

While it's nice that AMD appears to be making moves in the right direction with their ATI drivers, the fact remains that the only major vendor to release and fully support open source graphics and wireless drivers on Linux is... Intel.

Slackware is becoming a real favaorite for me. It's fast, nimble and rock solid. However, I have a HP Mini 100 with a Broadcom 4312 (rev.01) wireless card. If you know anything about this card you know this is bad news....real bad news. But I decided to write this article to create some encouragement to those of you who are ready to leave Linux because you cannot get wireless going.

Qualcomm Atheros has released the source code of firmware for two of its 802.11n wireless chips on GitHub.