On 30.12.24 09:22, Johannes Berg wrote:
On Tue, 2024-12-24 at 09:07 +0100, Philipp Hortmann wrote:
Driver was contributed in 2008.
The following reasons lead to the removal:
- This driver generates maintenance workload for itself and for API wext
So I've been wondering, why are you so concerned about this? And in
particular, more concerned about it than the people actually doing the
maintenance? :)
One of my big fears is the hand over to the next generation maintainers
and developers. The less code and the less exceptions due to old
interfaces the easier it will be. We loose maintainers and developers
for many reasons, like: retirement, burnout, embargos or simply because
they are not paid and need to earn money. After giving some support on
the staging subsystem I cannot see at all that we can attract so many
talented people as required for a save future beyond 7 years...
People who evolved with the kernel development do not have a good sense
how difficult it can be to join nowadays.
A friend just bought two servers. One with a paid OS and one planned
with Linux as OS. The difference was over 12000 € due to licenses. What
would be the price when we do not have a choice? Do not feel save
because of today. We need to fight for tomorrow.
Where do you want to invest your time? Into the new technologies to keep
up at the front edge or to keep old stuff running that is not productive
anymore. But there might be someone who can pull the hardware once every
two month out of the shelf and ask why this is not working. Should this
really stop us from progress?
We got here because I removed a *staging* driver that was in the way of
some wext cleanups, but that had a thousand other reasons to never go
anywhere anyway.
Partial, for me more important was the try to remove all wext drivers in
October 2023 by Arnd Bergmann.
[PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging
https://lore.kernel.org/linux-staging/20231010155444.858483-1-arnd@xxxxxxxxxx/
- wext is deprecated and only used by two wireless drivers in
mainline kernel
true
- no progress changing to mac80211
It fundamentally cannot be converted to mac80211, it has a whole
different model. In fact it cannot even be converted to cfg80211 because
some APIs it uses just never existed there, and likely never will.
Tested a rebased version of this patch on the Playstation 3. Used
T2 Linux with Kernel 6.12.5 to test the Ethernet connection.
Arguably that's a pretty strong argument for *not* removing it, if it's
actually relatively simple today to bring up the latest kernel on a PS3.
I was not able to use the WLAN on T2 Linux. I just tested the Ethernet
connection as I know that the developer of T2 is using it. The reason
why I bought the PS3 is to see if Linux on it is really a use case. But
all I found is that it is only a test vehicle to say T2 is working on
Power PC architecture.
At the time the PS3 WLAN driver was added to the mainline kernel it was
really cool stuff. But nowadays it is just a high Power consuming device
with a noisy fan and not enough RAM to do anything (256MB). The
powerfull GPU is not supported by the kernel.
Do I need to find out why the WLAN is not working under T2 on PS3 to
convince you? The WLAN is working under redribbon Linux with Kernel 3.5
on the PS3.
T2 is working but to make this happen the T2 Author has an own repo for
patches to apply. In the following video he publishes his view on how
well the ps3disk is maintained and tested by the linux kernel community.
My impression of this is that ps3disk is not tested on hardware at all.
You can find this in a youtube video: “I can't believe VIP Linux kernel
developer BROKE PS3 support” but watch out that you are in a good mood
otherwise it is pulling you down like me...
The commit that is breaking the function is:
commit a7f18b74dbe171625afc2751942a92f71a4dd4ba
This fixes are not in Mainline up to today. So who beside T2 Linux is
using this? You can find more of those breaking patches... and videos...
The following points are also in the list of reasons:
- This driver has a maximum 54MBit/s as it supports only 802.11 b/g.
- Using this hardware is security wise not state of the art as WPA3 is
not supported.
Thanks for your patience.
Bye Philipp
