Re: Broadcom hybrid_wl driver
Jarod Wilson wrote:
Heh, sorry 'bout that... Although to be honest, I dunno that I'd suggest
a kmod as a first package for *anyone*, since they consist of so much
black magic... :)
However, I'd be perfectly happy if you wanted to take this on as its
primary maintainer, with me as a co-maintainer.
Fair point about a kmod not being an ideal place to start! I've tried to
read a fair bit about kmodtool and packaging kmods but clearly my
understanding is still rather limited. However I felt it was important
to start with a package that I actually use on a day-to-day basis so
that I'm in a good position to follow the development and
find/apply/create new patches.
I'd be delighted to have you as a co-maintainer - it would be great to
have someone to learn from and help answer any questions or problems I
come across!
> One thing missing from the package seems to be the patch to fix the
> vlanmode issue.
>
Wasn't aware there was such a patch, by all means, feel free to wedge it
into the srpm.
I'll do that, and once I've taken a look through the spec file and done
some testing I'll submit it for review.
Okay, so back to the Linux side and the hybrid_wl driver... I get no
better than ~350KB/s. I presume the driver isn't handling the
single-antenna very well or something, but a buddy of mine who also got
a Dell w/the same card said hybrid_wl performed pretty badly for him too
(the Dell has two antenna internally), but was having stability issues
with ndiswrapper. I've used ndiswrapper w/the BCM432<something> chip in
my AppleTV with excellent results though, so I'm off to try that next...
Hmmm... I have read very varied reports on this driver - some say it is
fast and others report poor performance - I am guessing that it could be
dependent on the specific chipset but I'm not sure. I'll try to collect
some info and see whether there are any patches in the wild that improve
performance. I am not in a position to really test the speeds since I
only use my wireless for broadband so the speed isn't really an issue.
For me the best thing about this driver is that it works flawlessly with
NetworkManager whereas the ndiswrapper/windows driver combo was badly
broken when used with WPA/WPA2 encryption and NetworkManager even though
it was fine when using wpa_supplicant scripts alone to connect (FWIW
I've got a 4328 chipset on x86_64).
Best
Chris