Longtime Linux Wireless Developer Passes Away

The Linux kernel community has sadly lost one of its longtime, prolific contributors to the wireless (WiFi) drivers.

Larry Finger who has contributed to the Linux kernel since 2005 and has seen more than 1,500 kernel patches upstreamed into the mainline Linux kernel has sadly passed away. His wife shared the news of Larry Finger's passing this weekend on the linux-wireless mailing list in a brief statement.

"This is to notify you that Larry Finger, one of your developers, passed away on June 21st."

Larry Finger began contributing originally to the Broadcom BCM43XX driver back in the day and over the years has contributed a lot to Linux WiFi drivers. His more recent contributions had been around the RTW88, RTW89, R8188EU, R8712, RTLWIFI, B43 and other Linux networking drivers.

In part to his contributions, the Linux wireless hardware support has come a long way over the past two decades... Longtime Linux users will certainly remember the days of struggling with WiFi support, resorting to NDISWrapper for using Windows WiFi drivers on Linux, and other headaches compared to today's largely trouble-free wireless hardware support.