Intel's IWD 2.0 Released For Modern Linux Wireless Daemon

[Grim85]

can iwd do EAP 802.1x networks without having to manually build a essid conf file yet?

[cherio]

Being on Arch I've had iwd+networkd setup running for a few months now without issues. Just sharing.

[loganj]

You mean on Intel cards? I doubt they are following Microsoft's example.
The lack of support for 5GHz is due to a quirk called LAR - card must be aware of other 5GHz stations prior to being able to broadcast on 5GHz.

It is possible to work around this issue by patching hostapd to scan (so that the card finds out there is a 5GHz station nearby) before initiating the access point.

the microsoft part was just sarcasm. microsoft does not allow softap if my wifi card is set to use only 5ghz

also does iwd use hostapd?

[mdedetrich]

this video gives a good overview of why they built iwd and its advantages. basically, designed for linux, clean code base, proper abstractions, nice command line tool. also, since wpa_supplicant (the alternative) had lots of architectural issues, iwd was able to correct kernel driver issues that wpa_supplicant never exposed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIqT2obSPDk

Thanks for the share, watching it now. Its quite sad how left behind some parts of Linux are, so happy that iwd exists and can't wait till its fully stable and default on distro's.

[archkde]

so softap on 5ghz is available? or are they still following microsoft example of only 2ghz softap?
i know they block their own cards on 5ghz softap but they should not block other cards too

I can't get it to work even on 2GHz. It's even worse than wpa_supplicant where only WPA3 is broken.

[AnAccount]

Can IWD handle predictable interface names yet? I haven't had a look at it for a while, but last time I got some race with udev...

[reba]

I've been using iwd instead of wpa_supplicant just for fun now for several months on my Debian machine and it was completely problem-free, in fact, I did not really experience a difference, the replacement was transparent. NetworkManager has to get set a flag to enable iwd support and once done, it requested the passwords again, when connecting for the first time. That's all.

[brent]

I see that right before the release there is this change:


I wonder what this means for privacy.
If the IPv6 address is derived from the MAC address and if the IPv6 support can be disabled.
If not, I'm not interested into using such garbage software that doesn't care about my privacy!

IPv6 privacy extensions (i.e. randomized addresses) are enabled by default on all desktop Linux distributions. This is a non-issue!

[dlq84]

I see that right before the release there is this change:


I wonder what this means for privacy.
If the IPv6 address is derived from the MAC address and if the IPv6 support can be disabled.
If not, I'm not interested into using such garbage software that doesn't care about my privacy!

Obviously you can disable ipv6. If not with iwd, in the kernel. Anyway, you should generate a new MAC address if you really care.

[fitzie]

What are the advantages of it? Could you please elaborate on it?

Also, it would be nice to make a collaborative project with own governance, not just Intel branding everywhere.

Is this so better compared to alternatives? What's left to implement?

this video gives a good overview of why they built iwd and its advantages. basically, designed for linux, clean code base, proper abstractions, nice command line tool. also, since wpa_supplicant (the alternative) had lots of architectural issues, iwd was able to correct kernel driver issues that wpa_supplicant never exposed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIqT2obSPDk