Linux 6.7 Staging Drops The QLGE Ethernet & rtl8192u WiFi Drivers

The staging changes for Linux 6.7 are on the heavier side in part due to many new contributors from Outreachy mailing in their first kernel patches with various minor fixes. But staging is also lightened up a bit by dropping a wired Ethernet and wireless driver as part of the ongoing kernel effort to remove unused and old WiFi drivers.

As I wrote about back in October, the QLogic 10Gb "QLGE" Ethernet driver is being removed. There's been no significant changes to this driver since January 2021 and no one has stepped up to maintain it.

Since that article some users have voiced that they continue to use QLogic 10Gb Ethernet adapters, but at the same time there's been no one willing to step-up to maintain this driver... There was talk of after Linux 6.7-rc1 submitting this driver to the networking subsystem rather than staging, but again no one willing to step-up to maintain this driver. The latest discussion is agreeing not to add orphaned code back to the Linux kernel. So A QLGE DKMS kernel module has been setup via this GitHub repository for those wanting to use the driver on new kernels moving forward. If/when anyone steps up to improve the driver's code quality that it can meet mainline standards, it could be potentially added back into the Linux kernel but alas no one has committed to improving this driver and so for now those still using these adapters will have to resort to the DKMS module.

The other driver being removed is the rtl8192u WiFi driver that's been in staging. It turns out that this driver has been broken since 2016 without anyone stepping up to address the quality of this driver and apparently not much usage by Linux users. This driver is for the RealTek RTL8192U Wireless LAN NICs.

Removing these unmaintained drivers is part of the broader and ongoing Linux kernel effort for dropping drivers that aren't maintained or found to have no apparent users riding the latest mainline kernels.

The list of other random changes making up the Linux 6.7 staging pull can be found via this mailing list post.