Re: WiFi 802.11/ac PCIe supported adaptor

Am Sat, 27 Sep 2014 23:44:19 -0700
Kevin Oberman <rkoberman_at_gmail.com> schrieb:

> On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 11:20 PM, Nathan Whitehorn <nwhitehorn_at_freebsd.org>
> wrote:
> 
> >
> > On 09/27/14 23:06, O. Hartmann wrote:
> >
> >> Am Sun, 28 Sep 2014 00:22:09 +0200
> >> Lars Engels <lars.engels_at_0x20.net> schrieb:
> >>
> >>  On Sat, Sep 27, 2014 at 02:38:30PM +0200, O. Hartmann wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> I'm looking for a replacemnt for my 802.11g WiFi PCIe adaptor card and
> >>>> want to
> >>>> replace it with an 802.11ac adaptor.
> >>>>
> >>>> Since I made very bad experiences with CURRENT and support of modest
> >>>> modern hardware
> >>>> (Haswell CPU/Intel  7260 DualBand WiFi NIC), I'd like to ask here first.
> >>>>
> >>>> I found this PCIe adaptor card attractive:
> >>>>
> >>>> GigaByte Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I
> >>>>
> >>>> I can not find ad hoc the WLAN chip used on that specific card, but
> >>>> maybe someone has
> >>>> experiences with that litte board.
> >>>>
> >>> FreeBSD doensn't support 802.11ac, yet.
> >>>
> >> I'm bitter aware of that. This OS doesn't support the chipsets, even if
> >> they provide also
> >> 11a/g/n.
> >>
> >> We have at our department now a bunch of Lenovo hardware, with Intels
> >> 7260 chipset. The
> >> laptops are now runninmg Ubuntu 14.0X something which obviously supports
> >> the WiFi chip.
> >> I'm the last man standing with FreeBSD on my private Lenovo :-(
> >>
> >
> > This is a serious problem. I'm about ready to install Linux on my laptop
> > as well just to get a usable system. Some kind of funding directed to a
> > willing developer would be hugely valuable for the usability of the
> > operating system on recent hardware. This is probably more important even
> > than Haswell graphics since without a driver, Haswell is merely slow,
> > whereas networking is completely broken.
> > -Nathan
> 
> 
> While I don't yet have need of it and probably won't any time soon,
> Haswell support is becoming critical. It is getting more and more difficult
> to get boards with pre-Haswell processors, especially for laptops. It is
> still pretty easy to get supported WiFi cards for both desktops and
> laptops. I feel Haswell is getting to be a critical issue.
> 
> VESA is available for Haswell systems, but it is very slow and too often
> the BIOS support of VESA is poor. Vendors want text mode for boot and such,
> but really have little interest in graphics as Intel has good native
> Windows drivers for them.Still waiting for Lenovo to fix VESA for my old
> Sandy Bridge laptop. I used VESA, which was badly broken, for almost a year
> waiting for KMS support, though I did get a recent BIOS update and have not
> tried VESA on it.
> --
> R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer, Retired
> E-mail: rkoberman_at_gmail.com
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Some notes from my side.

I have personally a i3-3220 IvyBridge based server with iGPU HD2500, which doesn't work
properly on CURRENT and gets messed up with EFI and vt(). The screen is dark after
loading i915kms and the reason having a highres console is at hand. This is two year old
hardware! This server is now getting a new XEON CPU (same board, but with a professional
CPU i5-122X v2 with a P4000 iGPU). At another site I work for there are plans obtaining
also such toy-XEONs for power consumption reasons and the iGPU play an important role
here. And those systems are due to government funding for the next couple of years
definitely NOT outdated hardware from the past, they will be Haswell. So what now? As far
as I can say: maintaining a FreeBSD based server system on hardware that needs more than
one single compromise is cost-ineffective. I hate to judge things in terms of
cost-effectiveness, but the time, I spent now getting a crap iGPU on my laptop to work or
that on that IvyBridge is unaffordable!

The same is now with the laptops. Intels iGPU is getting stronger and stronger and
combined with their CPUs, there is rarely need for a dedicated GPU. We use OpenCL a lot,
so GPUs are welcome, even in notebooks. But not for FreeBSD, since OpenCL seems to be
Linux-domain only. Anyway, the new bunch of laptops we order is not the crap from
yesterday. Since my last Dell had to last for at least four years, I will order top of
the line hardware now - and I'm willing to wait for some weeks, two months with interim
solutions until FreeBSD would support the hardware we obtain, but compared to the past I
see chance. Not all of us want Linux, some use PC-BSD, some FreeBSD. The picture changes
now.

Networking wasn't an issue for me for years, but now, sitting on a pile of neat new
hardware of which FreeBSD can not make any serious use, let me rethink. Luckily, The
Lenovo laptops have a mini PCIe WiFi NIC - if I'm willing to follow FreeBSDs agony I'm
able to swap the NIC with a piece of hardware that is supported. But it is additional
cost. I would happily do so - if there wouldn't be Linux support! I tried Ubuntu 14
something, and the WiFi NIC was recognized and was fully operational. Even the iGPU AND
the Optimus nVidia GT740M is usable, although Linux has also severe problems with the
Optimus technology, but somehow there are solutions. But having alternatives and drivers
for months out in a concurrent system like Linux arises some questions the answeres I
can't fathom. 

Well, I hope that there is some solution out. I found in the FreeBSD Forum an entry from
last year talking about Intel's dual band WiFi NIC 7260's support by the iwl() driver. I
never saw this driver and it is almost a year since the post was made. I do not need
necessarily 802.11ac or 802.11n support, I would be happy having 802.11g support
checking emails or checkin/checkout   texts and code via WiFi where no wire is available.

And please allow me a final note here.

I was always told (or even thaught!) that FreeBSD hasn't the fundings or the manpower to
solve problems like KMS, driver and so on. I guess several Linux distributions face a
similar problem, but somehow the manufactureres emmit drivers or support. I was aware of
that guy that was payed by Intel to develop OpenSource NIC drivers, wasn't his name
Vogel? What happened to him? If FreeBSD is pushed more and more in the background, then
it is also due to a bad politics. nVidia, for instance, offers a BLOB for their GPUs.
Yeah! But no OpenCL support. AMD offers nothing but promises and their efforts regarding
opensource drivers is a pity. nVidia "just informed Nouveau" (so the headline at
Phoronix,  if I'm not wrong), that they now make some new restrictions about their
harware. Well, FreeBSD hasn't this problem, we do not haven even xf86-video-nouveau in
the ports due to the lack of functionality in the kernel. The fact is: under these
circumstances, FreeBSD is UNUSABLE on some sort of recent hardware and even opensource
drivers are not an option anymore.


I can not wait a year until I can use the full potential of the hardware we purchased, so
hopefully I can run FBSD then in a virtual box ontop of Linux as long I need it.