[CentOS] CentOS 6 supported hardware

Thu Jul 7 12:12:36 UTC 2011
Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu>

On Wednesday, July 06, 2011 04:36:39 PM Ned Slider wrote:
> Yes, I see a couple of other repos are shipping kmod-wl binaries. We 
> noted that at the time we took legal advice to establish if we had 
> possibly misinterpreted the License. They obviously don't share our 
> concerns about the licensing terms for redistribution (or maybe they 
> just didn't read them too closely) :-/

Understood.  Obviously, don't put something in the repo you're not comfortable shipping; the .nosrc.rpm technique, with a documented build setup, to let people roll their own is fine, and has been used before for 'redistribution-restricted' code (like Sun/Oracle Java).

> Personally I'd rather try to find a way to pressurise Broadcom into 
> doing the right thing by the Linux community rather than support (IMHO) 
> draconian licensing restrictions... 

The image in my mind of clamping a hyperbaric chamber over a whole company gave me the laugh of the day, thanks so much for the Freudian slip on 'pressurise'..... perhaps thats common usage in your location; in mine we'd say 'pressure' or 'leverage' but reserve 'pressurize' for things like air compressors and such....

> Shame, as Broadcom adapters seem particularly prevalent 
> on AMD-based laptops. I bought an Intel-based laptop where pretty much 
> everything works with CentOS out of the box :-/

The Apple Airport in an Intel Mac is Broadcom; many Intel Dell's have the option of Broadcom, which is typically less expensive than the 3945 or similar Intel wireless chipset.  My Dell Inspiron 640m came with a Broadcom card; my Precision M65 had an Intel 3945 but has a Broadcom now (for other various reasons that are beyond the scope of the CentOS list).

The one AMD laptop I had that had PCIe wifi had an Atheros chipset..... but YMMV.

And just in case no one has said it lately, thanks to you and all the ELrepo folks for your efforts; even though I'm not currently using ELrepo for anything, I certainly appreciate what you'ns do.