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For me at least, when it comes to laptops, a Broadcom-WiFi-Chipset is a critical factor in the purchase decision (as a 'DONT BUY!'). In the past Open Source dri

For me at least, when it comes to laptops, a Broadcom-WiFi-Chipset is a critical factor in the purchase decision (as a 'DONT BUY!'). In the past Open Source drivers for 'Broadcom' were totally lacking. By now there are the brcm80211[0] drivers, wich kind of work, if you are lucky. With my last 2 laptops I wasnt so lucky, I still encountered constant disconnects and kernel-driver errors when working with them. The alternative was to use the reverse engineered 'b43'-driver wich kind of worked but never to my full satisfaction. I don't really know about 'patent trolling' on Broadcoms side, but these driver issues were enough for me to say: never again broadcom, when you want to use it with linux. [0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless#brcm80211 https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless#brcm8...

shmerl 9y ago
On Linux, Intel WiFi drivers are by far the best I think. I wouldn't use anything else at least, because of the past experiences.
- jabl 9y ago
  If you're satisfied with 802.11n then ath9k is IMHO the best. Only driver that does not require a magic firmware blob, and has all the bufferbloat reduction features.
  - davidfischer 9y ago
    For the record, Atheros is a subsidiary of Qualcomm. Edit: wrong preposition
    - jabl 9y ago
      Yes, but Atheros was acquired by Qualcomm much later than the release of ath9k (2011 and 2008, respectively).
      - davidfischer 9y ago
        True.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Yeah, but I don't know any blob-less driver for 802.11ac. Which is weird really. Why can't they make their firmware open?
- chucksmash 9y ago
  Absolutely this. I've had a couple of Dell Precision laptops running Ubuntu now and the one with a Broadcom WiFi chip was super frustrating. It's been a couple of years since that one but AFAIR, the connection would go down every 1-1.5 hours and you'd need to reload the relevant kernel module to get it working again. The other two have both had Intel WiFi cards and I've not seen similar issues.
- davemp 9y ago
  As far as broadcom and intel drivers. Intel is definately superior. I have both chipsets in my devices, and I've had bugs in broadcom drivers cost me hours more than once.

shmerl 9y ago

On Linux, Intel WiFi drivers are by far the best I think. I wouldn't use anything else at least, because of the past experiences.

jabl 9y ago
If you're satisfied with 802.11n then ath9k is IMHO the best. Only driver that does not require a magic firmware blob, and has all the bufferbloat reduction features.
- davidfischer 9y ago
  For the record, Atheros is a subsidiary of Qualcomm. Edit: wrong preposition
  - jabl 9y ago
    Yes, but Atheros was acquired by Qualcomm much later than the release of ath9k (2011 and 2008, respectively).
    - davidfischer 9y ago
      True.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Yeah, but I don't know any blob-less driver for 802.11ac. Which is weird really. Why can't they make their firmware open?
chucksmash 9y ago
Absolutely this. I've had a couple of Dell Precision laptops running Ubuntu now and the one with a Broadcom WiFi chip was super frustrating. It's been a couple of years since that one but AFAIR, the connection would go down every 1-1.5 hours and you'd need to reload the relevant kernel module to get it working again. The other two have both had Intel WiFi cards and I've not seen similar issues.
davemp 9y ago
As far as broadcom and intel drivers. Intel is definately superior. I have both chipsets in my devices, and I've had bugs in broadcom drivers cost me hours more than once.