Linux's Sole Wireless/WiFi Driver Maintainer Is Stepping Down : linux

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 48 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

Wireless is just a fad anyway /s

Many expressed their appreciation for Kalle's years of service to the Linux networking stack but as of writing no one has stepped up to take over the formal maintainer role. Thankfully there are other Linux WiFi driver developers out there working on the increasing number of Linux wireless drivers, just not any immediate leader yet to take on the maintainer duties.

Good to know :)

While I didn't use Linux back then, I heard the wifi situation was difficult to deal with. I assume this maintainer is responsible for fixing that over the years?

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 32 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I heard the wifi situation was difficult to deal with

Understatement of the year LMAO nah it was terrible. Typically the top 3 biggest PITA common issues was GPU, WiFi and trackpad, in that order. Every. Time. Didn't have the right brand, you were SOL. If you had a Dell with that wonderful WiFi card whitelist the damn brands that worked were always off it or were crappy.

Though I'd take WiFi driver issues over having to deal with that dam GPU bumble bee-thingy (idr anymore, the gaming laptop GPU "hot switching" thing)

I'm going to go lay down and have my trauma flashbacks now...

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 3 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

bumble-bee thingy

I was going to say wrong transformer because the technology was called nVidia Optimus

But apparently there's an utility named Bumblebee to deal with it.

[–] Aghast@lemmy.world 1 points 8 minutes ago

I think he was referring to the GPU switching software to make Optimus work on Linux.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Bumblebee

[–] swizzlestick@lemmy.zip 22 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Back in the day it just worked because you bought a card with a supported chip.... or you had to do some ungodly things with ndiswrapper to get the Windows driver loaded.

I think back then I was using wicd as well.

It's come a long way.

[–] hera@feddit.uk 10 points 3 hours ago

Omfg I remember ndiswrapper, how the fuck did that thing even work. Loading a windows driver on Linux???

[–] dharmacurious 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Okay, someone talk me down from the ledge here. I'm not techy, but I've been on Fedora for over a year, and dual booting since like 08. But the biggest hurdle back in the day for me was that my wifi was so hit or miss, even when it worked it was slow as shit. That and Netflix not working are what kept me from going full Ubuntu in like 09/10.

Am I going to have to go back to long ass Ethernet cords? Fuck, my laptop doesn't even have an Ethernet port :(

[–] Sanguine@lemmy.world 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Dude chill it'll be fine. Why are you on the ledge after this post? Someone is obviously going to step up and take their place.

[–] Tgo_up@lemm.ee 5 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

That's not obvious at all..

Maybe it is to people who are really deep into the Linux world but generally if there's only a single person in the world doing something, it's never obvious that someone else will start to do that if the first person stops.

[–] Sanguine@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Its pretty obvious that the folks at Linux aren't going to just say fuck the WiFi stack because the current sole maintainer is stepping down.

Also, it being a sole maintainer doesn't mean no one else would could do it.. Its probably a job that this person was able to handle solo and now that the position has become vacant, another will step in.

If this was some small niche I can understand the concern about the potential of having it go unfilled but WiFi / wireless is crucial.

[–] towerful@programming.dev 2 points 1 hour ago

Likely sole maintainer, not sole contributor

[+] Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org -18 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

If it gets as difficult as it used to be on Debian and Ubuntu, I'm running back to Windows.

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 14 points 3 hours ago

Guess I need to put learning kernel C on a higher priority to prevent you from running back to Windows.

Guess not. You will be running back in no time after the AI pesters you enough and makes you have to replace your CPU fans every 6 months.