FSF "Excited" For 802.11n WiFi USB Adapter Costing €50 In 2024 Holiday Shopping Guide

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FSF "Excited" For 802.11n WiFi USB Adapter Costing €50 In 2024 Holiday Shopping Guide

In prior years the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has published an Ethical Tech Giving Guide for holiday shopping where they recommend products like old AMD Opteron motherboards and USB to parallel printer cables that "respect your freedoms" and meet their strict free software definitions. Out today is their newest annual FSF Ethical Tech Giving Guide...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FSF-Ethical-Tech-Gifting-2024

[davidbepo]

lol, i love this dunking on impractical purism

[Ferrum Master]

I can suggest using MT7612U Wifi USB adapters... in linux if anyone cares

The heck, it is the only IC that I have managed to work in AP mode in Openwrt without any issues. Just put a heatsink on it thou...

[brad0]

The FSF is a complete joke.

[bachchain]

Damn, the FSF is really pulling out all the stops, aren't they?

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[eltomito]

I think it's kinda dumb of Michael to laugh at FSF for this. Their puritanism is half of the reason why Linux even exists. Striving for stuff that works with purely free software is what gives the whole free software community a direction. Without them, we'd be using Microsoft Lindows by now because they are more modern and more affordable being full of stupid ass ads and shit.

[davidbepo]

I can suggest using MT7612U Wifi USB adapters... in linux if anyone cares

The heck, it is the only IC that I have managed to work in AP mode in Openwrt without any issues. Just put a heatsink on it thou...

i have one of those, didnt work that well, switched to AX200 and couldnt be happier
are they free firmware? because otherwise i dont see much reason to use it

[cutterjohn]

Is the FSF not aware of what a joke they are yet? i.e. here are our impractical 'solutions' to your intractable problems...

[varikonniemi]

Was this a hit piece? At least you mentioned that there are much cheaper adapters with same chipset but you did not in any way compare them to the FSF recommendation. Might it be because you are not able to flash your own firmware into them and are at the knees before your owner if you use them?

[QwertyChouskie]

Was this a hit piece? At least you mentioned that there are much cheaper adapters with same chipset but you did not in any way compare them to the FSF recommendation. Might it be because you are not able to flash your own firmware into them and are at the knees before your owner if you use them?

Does open-source WiFi chipset firmware even exist? My understanding is that the reason these old WiFi-n adapters are RYF certified is because they bake the firmware onto the chip rather than being loaded at powerup by the driver. This is arguably worse, as if a security vulnerability is found, no one can update the firmware, not even the vendor.