Arch Linux

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Maximum wlan device driver coverage for a live disk

I'm working on an Arch based live disk that needs maximum coverage for as many wlan devices as possible. Obviously there are many built into the kernel, but there are plenty missing. A helpful thing about this project is that most of the devices are a few years older. My questions are as follows:

One situation that comes to mind is devices that are only covered by broadcom-wl. The normal procedure is to blacklist the broadcom kernel modules that ship with the kernel and modprobe wl. But if I want to have both sets of drivers available, is the idiomatic way to do this through udev rules and such? If so, is there something out there that handles this type of situation or does it need to be setup by me?

What other drivers do Arch users recommend for this type of project?

*** EDIT ***

I added ipw2100-fw, ipw2200-fw, and rt3562sta from the regular repos. And, I added b43-firmware from AUR which may be removed if the license doesn't permit redistribution of the firmware. I'm probably going to skip broadcom-wl unless there's a pre-made setup somewhere to switch to the wl module. So, if anyone has any other ideas, I'd be glad to hear them.

* No b43 for me. I didn't understand how that package worked and now that I do, I can't redistribute it.

Last edited by skottish (2015-03-22 02:48:29)