Linux Looks Toward Dropping Very Old WiFi Drivers

[robimarko]

I am not sure which part you are referring to, but there can be exceptions to general rules. If the reason a driver is being depreciated is listed and it is easy to find these drivers there is a higher chance of someone finding interest on updating a driver. Obviously not every driver will be saved or even should be. But some drivers are dropped just because of personpower and if someone wanted to start contributing an easy way would be getting a unmaintained, broken driver or api depreciated driver up to snuf. That would be a lot easier than writing a driver from scratch and would give useful kernel development experience.

But why need a special place for this?
Even now drivers with these issues are first deprecated and marked as such and then it usually takes years for them to get dropped.
Lack of manpower interested in obscure legacy HW is pretty much the sole reason why any of them get to the state where they are using stuff that was deprecated 10+ years ago.
If anybody wants to resurrect and fix them up to current standards they can do it even now, the reason is there in the commit message dropping the driver.

[GI_Jack]

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

Love it. Just fork it off into a seperate repo. Doesn't compile with the kernel, just there as refrence material in case someone is doing research.

[Sonadow]

Your average PC now has running drivers for HW which was first released decades ago.

Check whether you have the following modules loaded:

• ac97_bus (AC97 first released around ... 1997)
• bluetooth (exists for over two decades now)
• i2c_piix4 (at least three decades old)
• nvme (exists for over a decade)
• snd_hda_codec (almost two decades old)
• ata_generic (almost three decades old)

I continue to marvel at people opining everywhere often when they have zero expertise. Why? Why do you even care? And if you cared, why didn't you ... compile the kernel yourself which I've been doing for over 25 years now?

Meanwhile, most XP64 drivers and Vista64 drivers can run unmodifed in Windows 11.

Literally two decades of driver ABI stability.

[avis]

Meanwhile, most XP64 drivers and Vista64 drivers can run unmodifed in Windows 11.

Literally two decades of driver ABI stability.

• Windows XP drivers are completely incompatible with Windows Vista and anything beyond it.
• Windows 10/11 requires SHA256 signed drivers, and not a single Windows Vista driver will work because Vista used the SHA1 signing method which has long been deprecated.
• Only some relatively new Windows 8.1 64 drivers can probably be used in Windows 11.
• Display Driver Model was completely reworked for Windows 10, so Windows 8 GPU drivers are completely incompatible with Windows 10 or 11.
• Some driver compatibility existed between Windows Vista and 7.
• Some driver compatibility existed between Windows 7 and 8.
• Drivers for Windows 10 are generally compatible with Windows 11 but there are minor exceptions. Windows 11 supports many new devices out of the box, e.g. USB4 which Windows 10 didn't, so you won't be able to install generic USB4 Windows 10 drivers on Windows 11 (it doesn't even make sense).
• Printer driver compatibility is somewhat amazing but I don't know all the details. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 7 64 printer drivers worked in Windows 11 but please don't quote me on that.

I'm sorry but overall your statement is almost completely invalid unless we are talking about hacking Windows 11 hard (i.e. disabling driver signature verification, Secure Boot and TPM, etc - which no sane person would ever do).

[Sonadow]

• Windows XP drivers are completely incompatible with Windows Vista and anything beyond it.
• Windows 10/11 requires SHA256 signed drivers, and not a single Windows Vista driver will work because Vista used the SHA1 signing method which has long been deprecated.
• Only some relatively new Windows 8.1 64 drivers can probably be used in Windows 11.
• Display Driver Model was completely reworked for Windows 10, so Windows 8 GPU drivers are completely incompatible with Windows 10 or 11.
• Some driver compatibility existed between Windows Vista and 7.
• Some driver compatibility existed between Windows 7 and 8.
• Drivers for Windows 10 are generally compatible with Windows 11 but there are minor exceptions. Windows 11 supports many new devices out of the box, e.g. USB4 which Windows 10 didn't, so you won't be able to install generic USB4 Windows 10 drivers on Windows 11 (it doesn't even make sense).
• Printer driver compatibility is somewhat amazing but I don't know all the details. I wouldn't be surprised if Windows 7 64 printer drivers worked in Windows 11 but please don't quote me on that.

I'm sorry but overall your statement is almost completely invalid unless we are talking about hacking Windows 11 hard (i.e. disabling driver signature verification, Secure Boot and TPM, etc - which no sane person would ever do).

XP x64 peripheral drivers (ie, not GPU drivers) are usable on Vista 64. And Windows 11 even downloads 2007-era drivers (that's 16 years ago!) from Windows Update for certain old hardware like WiFi cards. These are definitely Vista-era drivers.

[Quackdoc]

XP x64 peripheral drivers (ie, not GPU drivers) are usable on Vista 64. And Windows 11 even downloads 2007-era drivers (that's 16 years ago!) from Windows Update for certain old hardware like WiFi cards. These are definitely Vista-era drivers.

I have drivers for old graphics tablets from windows 98 that still work

[fitzie]

Major popular distros normally enable pretty much all the available drivers, period. I'm too lazy to read the rest of your comment given that you started with a blatantly false statement.

If upstream drops them, fine, distros will follow. Until then no one will take your proposal seriously.

this is from fedora config-6.5.7-300.fc39.x86_64:

# CONFIG_USB_ZD1201 is not set
# CONFIG_WLAN_VENDOR_ATMEL is not set

(for clarity, those are two of the several drivers they upstream wants to yank).

I don't even know what you said is any different then what I said. Since I compile kernels with the distro config, I kinda know that most drivers are compiled as modules, but I'll have to be content that you're not making any sense (factually or otherwise).

[avis]

fitzie

I said "pretty much all", not all of them.

CONFIG_USB_ZD1201 requires external firmware: "The zd1201 device requires external firmware to be loaded. This can be found at http://linux-lc100020.sourceforge.net/",

CONFIG_WLAN_VENDOR_ATMEL:

commit 25e04032c634bec6f968bd85eccc52c616c80313
Author: Paul Bolle <>
Date:   Fri Jan 11 15:55:42 2019 +0100

    Remove all references to unused Kconfig symbols
    
    There are references to 330 unused Kconfig symbols in the tree. These
    symbols are unused because, while they are valid, they do not end up in
    the final .config files that the kernel's build system generates. This
    happens because their dependencies aren't set.
    
    Since these symbols do not end up in the final .config files they have
    no effect on the build. Remove them.

[yoshi314]

isn't there an app like debian's popcon but for hardware ? collect data about kernel module usage, and identify what's completely obsolete.

[tildearrow]

Meanwhile, most XP64 drivers and Vista64 drivers can run unmodifed in Windows 11.

Literally two decades of driver ABI stability.

Sure.

10 years ago, I upgraded a laptop from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Graphics stopped working completely after a BSoD. Had to reinstall.