Linuxant and Truemobile 1180???

Death Valley Pete · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 6:43 pm Post subject: Linuxant and Truemobile 1180???

I just read this on /. about this company that's making it possible to use Windows drivers under Linux.

So I read it and scoped out Linuxant's site, because I have one of those famous TrueMobile 1180's. It looks like they're supported. That is very cool. It's no kind of free, I know (free trial at the end of which I imagine they'll be prepared to sell me a license), but I really don't mind - I'd rather have working drivers for $n (n<50) than nonexistant drivers that's free-as-in-speech.

So... anybody else with the infamous Broadcom chipset want to see if it works? (I'm going to try it, of course, but I've never set up a wireless anything under Linux.) Anybody have an opinion on using Windows drivers under Linux?

Time for me to go try it.
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Owiber · n00b Joined: 01 May 2003 Posts: 38

It does say: "Linuxant hopes that DriverLoader will remain free for end-users." so maybe it will be free for us to use.

Let us know how it goes, I've got an 802.11g mini-pci card that I replaced with an older 802.11b card... but if this works, awesome! =)

swimgeek · Posted: Sun Oct 19, 2003 10:27 pm Post subject: TrueMobile 1180

I have a Dell TrueMobile 1180 which is based on a broadcom chipset. If this thing works: sweeeet! I don't have to use windows anymore at all!!!

xr31Daisy · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2003 9:13 am Post subject:

This thing works.

I'm using a 2.6.0-test7 kernel, on a Dell Inspiron 8200, with a TrueMobile1180 mini-pci card, and I didn't have any trouble setting it up. I've got a 30 days trial license from linuxant, and I'll probably buy a full license if I don't have any unexpected troubles in the following weeks. ( and get rid of the pcmcia card. )

One caveat : it doesn't like ACPI to much ( unloading the module before suspending to ram seems to work. Had the same trouble with USB. )

However, keep an eye on the native linux driver project, they seem to be making some progress. I'd really prefer to have a real driver.

Death Valley Pete · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2003 4:22 pm Post subject:

Embarassing question, but... how'd you do it? I couldn't find a wireless howto that wasn't PCMCIA-centric, and I've never done this before. I'm still trying various things, but a step-by-step would be greatly appreciated...

For reference, this is what I'm getting

swimgeek

Hi,
For me it worked like a charm. I'm posting this post right now using the same driver. Anyways, I'll reproduce the steps for you here again.

1. Download the *.tar.gz package and inflate it.
2. Switch to the directory that you expanded the tar-ball to.
3. su to root
4. execute "make install"
I didn't receive any error messages during this step.
5. Point your browser to http://localhost:18020/ and complete the rest of the configurations steps. Remember you will need the directory containing your windows driver. On my Dell Inspiron 4150, the directory was labelled R46482.
6. Input the license information obtained from the linuxant.com website.
7. Your driver module should've been loaded by now. Do a lsmod to confirm.
8. At this time "ifconfig -a" should show your wireless card
9. To stop execute "bcmwl5stop"
10. To start again reload the module.
11. If you use dhcpcd you will might need to do a "dhcpcd -k eth1" and then "dhcpcd eth1".

Hope that helps.

Ashu

p.s. If anyone want's me to help make this a better howto I'll greatly appreciate help with this. I posted this on the documentation forum. Here's the link

Death Valley Pete · Posted: Mon Oct 20, 2003 11:30 pm Post subject:

I did something screwy the first time I tried it, but I reran bcmwl5config, rebuilt the drivers, and everything worked.

Holy. Cinderella. It works. That is so incredibly awesome. I mean don't get me wrong: I wish that freaking Broadcom and Dell would use an open API and all of that - native drivers would be far superior. But given the choice between kludgy drivers and none at all I'm very happy to have these.

It's worth noting that I had to emerge wireless-tools (probably sounds like a no braner but it stumped me for a minute or two). Also I compiled wireless support into the kernel, though I'm not sure that that was necissary (anybody know?). Also, I followed the advice here - again I don't know how necissary it was but it didn't hurt.

I'm definitely going to follow this pretty closely in the future.
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