http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3690656353.html

Quote:For many laptop users, the most important news is that Linux now includes built-in driver support for the Broadcom 43xx based wireless card family. This WiFi chip family is found in many laptops such as many models from Acer, Apple (those using Airport Extreme), Compaq, and Dell.

This driver support depends upon another new enhancement to the kernel -- the addition of a Softmac layer in the wireless stack. Softmac is a software MAC (machine access control) layer that works with Linux's built-in 802.11 layer. This provides a great deal of WiFi protocol management features for chips that, unlike the Intel ProSet Wireless chip family, don't handle these details in hardware.

Softmac is not the only open-source project that takes this approach. MADWiFi, for example, uses one to support Atheros WiFi chips. Since Softmac is now part of the kernel, however, it can be used by developers to more easily support other WiFi chips. There have already been efforts at supporting the Prism54 and the Ralink rt2* 802.11 chip families using Softmac.

The new Linux kernel also includes automatic support for SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) computers on the i32 and 64 families. With this, Linux distributions will detect how many processors, or conceivably processor cores, are running on the system at boot time. The distribution will then automatically adjust to make the most of the existing architecture.

Speaking of performance boosts, the new kernel has also given the popular Ext3 file system a kick in the pants by supporting mapping multiple block file input/output to disk. In the past, Ext3 could only map one block at a time. This lead to a real speed bump, especially when it came to handling sequential I/O workloads.

BCM43xx! Win!

I'll have to try that out, oh, now.

Yep. This works.

HappyMutant Wrote:Yep. This works.

See, with Gentoo you don't have to wait for things like this.

georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:http://www.linux-watch.com/news/NS3690656353.html

Quote:For many laptop users, the most important news is that Linux now includes built-in driver support for the Broadcom 43xx based wireless card family. This WiFi chip family is found in many laptops such as many models from Acer, Apple (those using Airport Extreme), Compaq, and Dell.

This driver support depends upon another new enhancement to the kernel -- the addition of a Softmac layer in the wireless stack. Softmac is a software MAC (machine access control) layer that works with Linux's built-in 802.11 layer. This provides a great deal of WiFi protocol management features for chips that, unlike the Intel ProSet Wireless chip family, don't handle these details in hardware.

Softmac is not the only open-source project that takes this approach. MADWiFi, for example, uses one to support Atheros WiFi chips. Since Softmac is now part of the kernel, however, it can be used by developers to more easily support other WiFi chips. There have already been efforts at supporting the Prism54 and the Ralink rt2* 802.11 chip families using Softmac.

The new Linux kernel also includes automatic support for SMP (Symmetric Multiprocessing) computers on the i32 and 64 families. With this, Linux distributions will detect how many processors, or conceivably processor cores, are running on the system at boot time. The distribution will then automatically adjust to make the most of the existing architecture.

Speaking of performance boosts, the new kernel has also given the popular Ext3 file system a kick in the pants by supporting mapping multiple block file input/output to disk. In the past, Ext3 could only map one block at a time. This lead to a real speed bump, especially when it came to handling sequential I/O workloads.

Broadcom driver support!!

I don't have to screw around with wrapping windows drivers anymore! Sweet!