[geeks] Policy for system / package upgrades in Enterprise

[nate at portents.com]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:24:03 -0400, Phil Stracchino <alaric at metrocast.net>
wrote:
> On 07/26/10 13:00, nate at portents.com wrote:
>> I didn't have any problems running 9.04 on my Acer Aspire One with an
>> Intel Atom (well short of the Atheros wifi driver issues, but I
>> ultimately
>> solved those by swapping out that wifi card with an Intel one).
> 
> There are Linux issues with Atheros wireless drivers?  That's bad news,
> considering Atheros is pretty much the only "authorized" mini-PCI
> wireless chipset many IBM Thinkpads will allow booting with...   :p

I think it depends on the particular Atheros chipset.  Until 2008 Atheros
wasn't even open-sourcing anything, so Atheros drivers were
reverse-engineered up until that point.  I kept hoping they'd get better,
but I gave up in February of this year:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1408560

> (Without a BIOS patch, anyway.  Apparently *SOME* Intel ipw2100 cards
> *may* work in *some* Thinkpads.  I have two Thinkpads here that need
> working wireless cards, and no Atheros cards to try.)

I've read about notebooks that lock their BIOS to particular models/brands
of wifi cards, and that's really sad.  Very unfortunate that people have to
resort to modifying the BIOS to work around it.

- Nate