2009/9/10 Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>:
I think it is a good idea to establish our frame of reference for openSUSE testing.
My main interest is in wireless networking. I have worked for several years as a member of the team that developed the reverse-engineered driver for Broadcom BCM43XX devices, and for the past two years, I have been on the RE side of the fence converting MIPS binary into "specifications", i.e. a set of "do this, then do that" lists.
Wireless has long been a problem with Linux in general. One continually hears the complaint "Why doesn't it work the way Windows does?".
Brilliant! If you can help with this issue, will be a great step for openSUSE! Better compatibility with wireless device, for example Broadcom, which has a lot of problems.
The driver side of the equation is in pretty good shape with the development of the MAC layer and associated components. We do handle regulatory requirements and restrictions really well, which is very important as many wireless devices are operated outside the region encoded in their PROM. Another development is that manufacturers are contributing more to drivers. In particular, Intel and Atheros have sizable groups devoted to Linux drivers. Unfortunately, Broadcom is not among that group, but they do now offer a binary driver for their latest devices. It has a lot of faults, which is why the RE group is working hard to support the newer BCM devices.
The area that needs watching and testing is NetworkManager, which is early in the development cycle (Version 0.7). With each new release, existing code is likely to break configurations that were working. On two recent occasions, once with 11.1 and once with 11.2, updates made it impossible to connect to an encrypted network. That situation is what I hope to catch before the updates are released.
Yes, work with encrypted connections are so important! Did you created a bug report to NetworkManager too? NetworkManager to me is a problem too, because I can`t do last KDE version(KDE 4.3) work automatically with my own static ip configuration. If we can talk with NetworkManager team and also with openSUSE developer team, will be a great work!
My hardware consists of an HP laptop winning x86_64 with 2 different mini-PCIe Broadcom wireless devices, a desktop also running x86_64, and an ancient Mtech laptop with the AMD version of an i586 CPU with two distinct Cardbus-based Broadcom devices. In addition, I have a Dell DW1450U device that uses p54usb as its driver, two Realtek USB wifi sticks - an RTL8187L and an RTL8187B, and two PCI-based Broadcom devices for the desktop.
I hope that the efforts of this group will help to improve openSUSE. I started my Linux efforts with SuSE 6.4 and have been a user since.
Sincerely, its my main motivation too. I work with SuSE/openSUSE since 1999. And I think which since SuSE 6.4, we have a lot of success, improvements, and we will reach a perfect distro. Its all about motivation dude!
Larry
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