NOTE: this page is for archival only, see the note at the end of the page.

Existing Linux Wireless drivers

We currently have a fair amount of working drivers that cover most of the available wireless networking cards. However, they don't implement all features and may have some issues, due to various reasons like companies not providing specs. Below is an alphabetically sorted list of drivers and what they currently can and can't do.

All drivers can run in station mode, but not all support the other modes, this is also shown in the table below.

Driver

full monitor ¹

PHY modes

?

?

?

B

adm8211 (ADMtek devices)

no

no

?

B

ath5k (Atheros devices)

no

yes

?

A/B/G

b43/b43legacy (Broadcom chips)

yes

yes

yes

B/G²

Intel ipw2100 ³

no

yes

no

B

Intel ipw2200 ³

yes

no

A/B/G

no

yes

no

A/B/G

no

yes

no

A/B/G/N

no

yes

no

B/G

madwifi ⁴ (Atheros devices)
/!\ madwifi is not fully open source

yes

yes

yes

A/B/G

p54 (Intersil chips)

no

no

?

B/G⁵

no

no

?

A/B/G⁶

no

no

?

B/G

no

no

?

B/G

zd1211rw (ZyDAS ZD1211/ZD1211B chips)

no

no

?

B/G⁵

monitor all frames during regular operation (1)
802.11a devices exist, but currently can't be used with this driver, A/B/G devices will work in B/G mode only (2)
uses legacy ieee80211 stack (3 4)
brings own net80211 stack, see ath5k instead (5)
A/B/G devices not supported yet (6 7)
802.11a capabilities depend on the actual radio chip used (8)

This is a static dump of the old wiki, taken after locking it in January 2015. The new wiki is at https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/.
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