On 10/20/23 02:34, Johannes Berg wrote:
Can you explain what you're trying to achieve by that? And even, what is the
reason to have these out-of-tree versions of the drivers?
Johannes,
I will give you a slightly different explanation than given by Brian.
When HP or Lenovo issue a new laptop model, they always use the latest Realtek
wifi device - the rtw89 wifi 6 models at the moment. The new computers are
released with Windows, which does have a driver for these devices.
If the user wants to run Linux, it is likely to be an older Ubuntu version
running a kernel issued before rtw89 became part of the kernel. As a result, the
user has no wifi under Linux. As far as I can tell, the equivalent problem does
not happen for Intel or Athlon wifi hardware.
I created the rtw89 GitHub repo, and rtw88 (wifi 5) repo before that to backport
the wireless-next version of the drivers into something that will build and run
on kernels 5.4 or newer. With a 'git clone' and 'make', a novice user can get
working wifi.
Keep in mind that most of our users are not very sophisticated. They frequently
do not install the kernel headers even though the README tells them explicitly
what the error means, and what they need to do for several of the popular
distros. In addition, they struggle with the concept that out-of-kernel drivers
must be built for the running kernel. Most can handle 'git pull', 'make', and
sudo make (sign) install', but not anything more complicated.
As Brian said, I have done the maintenance by copying the patches from
wireless-next into the GitHub repo, and handling the API changes in a manual
fashion with '#ifdef LINUX_VERSION_CODE ...' blocks. This works for me, but
unlike me, Brian is a programmer, and he wants to create a script whenever he
sees anything repetitive.
As it is unlikely that I will be doing this much longer, I support whatever he
needs to make him comfortable. Although the kernels found in newer releases of
various distros will eventually support the drivers, Realtek is adding wifi 7
features to the drivers. Once they release the new hardware, it will be a short
time until it is part of new models of laptops.
I do not see where backports has any part of the solution to this problem. As I
had difficulty in getting it configured the first time I used that project, I do
not see that as part of the solution for rtw88/89, other than it could be used
to suggest solutions for the API changes. My experience allows me to look at the
wireless-next and mainline kernels and determine what changes are needed. I am
not sure I could explain that well enough to teach Brian.
Finally, I applaud Brian's initiative toward this project and I am content in
knowing that the code is in good hands.
Larry
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