Yeah I guess I am a bit pessimistic about this though I got a major white pill today with amd going for coreboot support by default by 2026. So maybe one of the radio chipset manufacturers will have a bright moment at some point, might be mediatek, might be atheros coming back from the grave or someone entirely different. Even then I doubt we are ever going to get as much freedom as with the ath9k because of regulations.
Also I love that someone actually made an m.2 module out of the old atheros chips that were made back when m.2 wasn’t even a concept. Small scale manufacturing really enables some neat stuff.
@Adrian_Joachim That’s awesome! I’m happy AMD is going with coreboot. That’s a bit step forward :).
At this point I don’t mind which company steps forward and wants to work with us, anyone willing can join the family.
I didn’t know that those Think Penguin M2 chipsets were built from old interface modules. That’s awesome and explains why FreeBSD (and Linux, etc) has good support for it even though it’s a newer form factor. Now things are making more sense. With that knowledge, the $71 price tag makes a lot more sense now and that’s actually a really good price given the labor required to convert an old module to a newer form factor. Let alone testing, and additional labor.
The history on why the atheros 9000 series has so open drivers is pretty wild, there were a lot of factors that came together at the right time to make that happen.
Can’t find the talk about the history of it but there is another interesting one, we have not got anywhere near as much access to the hardware since then.
I do like the idea of supporting hardware that has open drivers. Given the practical challenges that seem to be discussed here, is it possible for community members to make a listing(wiki) of open hardware that is compatible with the Framework laptop? One of the reasons I’m not on BSD as mentioned in the other thread is the lack of or workaround required to get WiFi working on FreeBSD.
I finished watching the presentation you sent @Adrian_Joachim. It was really good and I also recognize the name Adrian Chadd due to me actually receiving another Atheros chip I received, but that one wasn’t supported unfortunately.
I’m a huge advocate for open source and most of my applications are licensed under 2-BSD (but not all). I also don’t support blobs and closed sources, but these presentation definitely confirmed for me that there needs to be blobs for some stuff for the betterment of the society. Imagine allowing someone to just program the chip so that it sends those lower frequency signals that will cause a whole neighborhood to possibly lose service. Things can get dangerous quick. In this case I agree that any functionality that could cause a problem be put behind a blob. Maybe not a popular opinion but yea… Although I still want as much of the driver as possible to be open source, only the dangerous stuff should be in the blob.
Maybe there could be a good compromise between the community and driver makers / regulators someday.
This was all fun and games when wifi was just in the 2.4 and 5ghz ism bands, with the extended 5ghz and 6ghz range you are sharing spectrum with stuff like weather radar and satellite coms and stuff. The rules on those is a lot more complicated, some frequencies can only be used if they have been scanned and were clear for a certain amount of time and imediately stop transmitting if certain signals are received. So I can kinda understand why the regulators want to lock stuff down. The chip manufacturers being lazy and just locking everything down instead of just the actually important bits is whole other issue.
On the other hand just spewing noise on a frequency can be dome with relatively cheap hardware, no need to hack some complex space magic electronics for that.
IIRC Mediatek is doing some open source stuff right now, afaik it is kinda similar to your danger blob description.
It should be possible to pass the Intel AX210 card to a lightweight Linux bhyve VM configured as a router for the FreeBSD host system. It’s a bit of extra complexity but the technique has been proven on distributions like QubesOS.
@Comfy Yup I wrote a guide about doing that using wifibox. But it causes side effects to the system, including but not limited to the internal bhyve vm not being able to re-detect the wireless card upon resume. There is a bug in the kernel about this but it doesn’t affect all machines (it does for me though). The best thing to do is to get away from the FreeBSD iwlwifi driver completely and use something that is better supported until further notice.
I think an easy compromise would be offering laptops without wifi cards. Framework used to offer the DIY edition without a wifi card but now they require ordering a wifi card. Its directly contradictory to the company’s stated mission goals to ship me mandatory e-waste. If you’re not going to offer a better wifi card, at least don’t make me dispose of your garbage.
The problem is that Framework as a company tries to keep their amount of SKUs low to help with logistics, and they were seeing too many people damaging their laptops by not being able to properly install the wifi card. It was a decision they had to make in order to account for the large number of customers that would struggle to install their own wifi cards.
@Azure I have to admit that my wifi gold connector pin broke like within the first 10 min of me unboxing it back in 2021 lol, luckily I was still able to use the wifi card with no issues by placing the antenna connector on top of where the connector was suppose to be located, and using a little bit of tape and pressure to keep it together. I haven’t had any hardware issues with connection speeds, or disconnects, etc that I’m aware of. The only issue is FreeBSD driver support but that’s a separate story. I’m not against framework allowing the option to have a wifi card, but they don’t necessarily need to remove the “don’t give me a wifi card” option. Just make it so that if someone picks a wifi card, it already comes assembled, like how they already do with the battery, keyboard, and various other components. I was actually pretty surprised of how many things were already pre assembled in the DIY edition. For whatever reason I thought I was gonna have to build the screen, frame, connect to laptop enclosure, battery, etc etc, but a good percentage was already assembled. This is not bad for sure, it was kinda fun just having to worry about putting the memory, wifi, nvme, and the expansion cards haha.
This is actually that logistics issue I mentioned in my previous post. The company originally planned to sell DIY kits where everything was an individual part, but that was going to be a nightmare for their shipping team, so they made the decision for the DIY version to have everything assembled except for the RAM, NVME storage and wifi card, which all came in their OEM packaging with the early laptops (that’s how mine was). when they saw that people were having issues breaking wifi cards, they changed it so that the wifi card was preinstalled into the DIY version just like the mainboard, battery, and screen.
They even talked about this in an earlier thread on the forum (maybe I’ll go find it if I can) but because they assemble laptops before storing them for shipping, it would make inventory harder to stock a “no wifi card” DIY version and a “wifi card installed” DIY version. plus they’d have to guess how many users will want to install their own wifi card, because they way they do inventory, they can’t just take a “no wifi card” DIY laptop, and add a card back in before shipping it from stock.
(note I have no inside knowledge on Framework’s logistics, so all of that is a best guess on how they stock product)
Good news all. I received the Atheros AR9462 from ThinkPenguin and replaced the Intel AX210. FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE picked it up flawlessly and it worked immediately. Sleep/Resume are now working again, no crashes, and association/dhcp worked nicely. I made a new post here (with pictures). I’ll be testing this card now and will update my post accordingly.
Damn I did not know the ax210 was this borked in bsd, appart from the whole being a black box and ap pretty much not working it works beautifully on linux and is pretty much the best card out right now.
The only place where I deal with bsd is freenas and there everything I have thrown at it so far worked, granted it was mostly crusty old 10gbit nics and hbas but those work fine XD.
