Linux Looks Toward Dropping Very Old WiFi Drivers

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Looks Toward Dropping Very Old WiFi Drivers

While the Linux kernel tends to keep around drivers for even very old hardware, once there are no known users left that would still be updating to new Linux kernel versions or the drivers pose a significant maintenance burden, it's eventually time to let them go. We've seen the WiMAX wireless code removed and now the latest on the Linux wireless networking side inching close to the chopping block are old WiFi drivers...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/2023-Linux-Drop-Old-WiFi

[CochainComplex]

I do miss the old PCMCIA slots and cards. Today, everything is attached to a fragile USB port (A/C-Whatever), or it's attached to the same port but with a cable, making it like a donkey tail.

[fitzie]

i wish the distros would take the lead in disabling drivers. The have a much quicker feedback loop with end users, and then they can give feedback to upstream about which drivers people don't care about. i also think there should be permanent documentation about when drivers were removed from the kernel. some tinkerer is going to have to make educated guesses about what is the latest kernel with a particular driver then just looking up the information.

[elbar]

Buying some dongle and wipe out differences between old and new wifi(and also in devices) should be in the interest of consumers and also manufacturers. And as a bonus also thinking about such things, which some have no capacity to bother and why they should...

[espi]

What about a new 'unstaging' area where things being retired go?

[zexelon]

What about a new 'unstaging' area where things being retired go?

This is a really cool idea! It would make a lot of sense to track this sort of thing easily for end users. They do mark things as deprecated, but an unstage area would be pretty handy.

[andre30correia]

i wish the distros would take the lead in disabling drivers. The have a much quicker feedback loop with end users, and then they can give feedback to upstream about which drivers people don't care about. i also think there should be permanent documentation about when drivers were removed from the kernel. some tinkerer is going to have to make educated guesses about what is the latest kernel with a particular driver then just looking up the information.

when some distro do that, there is a flame war, when canonical ask for hardware people use is a flame war, linux is not like that we all know that, some geek always complain because they have some card from 80's who stop working in new kernel

[Nuc!eoN]

What about a new 'unstaging' area where things being retired go?

That's a marvelous idea actually!

[LightBit]

I'm still using Broadcom BCM4312. I hope they don't remove drivers for it.
I hope they are talking about b43legacy, not b43 driver.

[ezst036]

I am a little hesitant on something like this. Linux has long been known for its very good hardware compatibility, especially on older hardware.

I wonder if making these an optional module would be a better option than getting rid of them altogether.