Project

General

Profile

Wireless Cards

Anonymous - about 3 years ago -

I'm trying to find a wireless card that I can use with Parabola. I checked h-node and found one with a free driver, but when I plugged it in dmesg told me it used non-free firmware and loading was disabled.

From the wireless docs, I found that there's two completed liberated drivers carl9170 and ath9k_htc. But I can't find any cards that use these drivers for sale.

Even searching the supported devices list is hard because the name on the list doesn't match the name used on Amazon.
https://wiki.debian.org/carl9170#supported
https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k_htc#Supported_Devices

Does anyone know of a solid wireless card? It can be USB or PCI, I just need something to connect to WiFi.


Replies (7)

RE: Wireless Cards - Anonymous - about 3 years ago -

You can find wireless adapters and cards that fully work with libre software from the Respect Your Freedom page of the Free Software Foundation. Based on your needs, you have both USB and PCI ones.

I personally use the Technoethical N300DB, which is based on the Atheros AR9382 integrated circuit and works with the free driver ath9k. I haven’t encountered any issue with Parabola so far.

RE: Wireless Cards - Anonymous - about 3 years ago -

Thanks takuwan. This is much easier that using the list of supported devices and searching one by one. I'll use this site when I need to buy hardware in the future.

Maybe this could be added as a suggestion in the Parabola docs?

RE: Wireless Cards - Anonymous - about 3 years ago -

You’re welcome.

Yes, it could be added to the Wiki, somewhere. I’ll have a look.

Wireless Cards - bill-auger - about 3 years ago -

it is difficult based only on brand names - the actual hardware
(the chip-sets) are re-used in many of them; but not all
possible brand names are listed - if you can get the seller to
tell you what the chip-set is, or which linux module it uses, you
can look those up more reliably

the following online shops sell libre-friendly computers and
computing hardware, exclusively - every item on these websites,
is compatible with 100% libre operating systems, such as
parabola

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/
https://tehnoetic.com/
https://store.vikings.net/
https://shop.libiquity.com/
https://retrofreedom.com/

there are others less expensive ones to be found; but you need to
find them - the older the hardware is, the more likely it is to
have a working libre driver - if you find some inexpensive or
used one, just look it up on h-node, and/or ask the seller which
linux module it uses, or ask which radio chip-set it has and
look that up on h-node

https://h-node.org/hardware/catalogue/en

i noticed that olimex has some very inexpensive ones; but i dont
know which driver they use - it would be nice to know; because
they are very inexpensive

RE: Wireless Cards - bill-auger - about 3 years ago -

Maybe this could be added as a suggestion in the Parabola docs?

https://wiki.parabola.nu/WiFi_devices_known_to_work_with_Parabola_GNU/Linux-libre

feel free to add any others which are not listed

RE: Wireless Cards - bill-auger - about 3 years ago -

i believe that i found a suitable and inexpensive USB wifi - the website mentions explicitly, that it is compatible with Linux-libre

https://www.olimex.com/Products/USB-Modules/MOD-WIFI-AR9271-ANT/

RE: Wireless Cards - Anonymous - about 3 years ago -

feel free to add any others which are not listed

Thanks, I didn’t know about this Wiki page too.

    (1-7/7)