What to use until Intel 5100/5300 drivers are stable?

vvulfe

Hey all,

I'm looking into purchasing a new laptop - unfortunately, all of those that I'm looking at use some version of the newer intel chipset - specs list it as either an Intel WiFi Link 5100/5300 or 5150/5350.

As I understand it, these chips will work with kernel 2.6.27 and the net-wireless/iwl5000-ucode package - however, I'm my linux-fu is not quite strong enough that I want to muck about with development kernels, especially given some of the threads I've seen about 2.6.27 damaging ethernet adapters.

So, it would seem to me that the solution would be to use a PCMCIA adapter until 2.6.28 comes along - however, to complicate matters, all of the laptops I'm looking at have only the newer "expresscard" slots.

Now, I've been out of the hardware game for a while, but my questions (more or less) are as follows:

-Is my understanding of the state of the intel drivers correct?
-Is there an expresscard WiFi adapter availible that will play nicely with 2.6.26?
-Is there another solution to this issue that I haven't thought of?

Thanks in advance, all!
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d2_racing · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 2:05 am Post subject:

Hi, in fact the kernel 2.6.27 works with the Iwl5100. I don't know about the Iwl5300 but I can tell that the Iwl5100 is working pretty well.

In fact, I don't see any problem right now if I compare to the iwl3945 or the iwl4965. Maybe I'm lucky, but it's the truth.

So, go for the Iwl5300 and in a couple of weeks, you will be able to run a Iwl5300 with Gentoo.

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

Both 5100 and 5300 should work fine. They use the same driver (iwlagn) as the 4965, so there's no reason for problems.

Also, 2.6.27 is no danger to your NIC. There was a bug in several -rc kernels which was able to harm certain e1000e NICs. That bug has been fixed since.. -rc7, off the top of my head. All final releases are safe.

d2_racing · Posted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 12:09 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the info.

vvulfe · Posted: Wed Dec 10, 2008 6:27 pm Post subject:

d2_racing · Posted: Thu Dec 11, 2008 1:36 am Post subject:

No problem