Let me mention that we REALLY dislike the way very stupid hardware vendors
name their cards containing DIFFERENT chipsets!!
One of these vendors is SpeedStream/Siemens: a card that uses the same
name "SS1021" is available in both Orinoco chip and ACX100 chip versions.
USRobotics also just started to enjoy these despicable acts:
the USR2210 usually has the ACX100, however newer versions with UNCHANGED
naming (e.g. at tigerdirect.com) contain a newer incompatible 802.11g
TI chipset.
But the worst offender is D-Link: they have "DWL-650" and "DWL-650+".
"DWL-650+" is simply an improved version of the "DWL-650", right?
WRONG!
The standard versions use Prism2.5, whereas the "+" versions use ACX100
chipset. Good luck in finding a (correct) driver!!
And it's even WORSE: I just found out that there is some newer
version of the "DWL-650" out that also contains the ACX100
(it uses the same hardware as the "+" versions).
Not to mention that D-Link now uses the DWL*650* naming for about 6 or 7
different products!
This BRAINDEAD STUPIDITY in device naming easily entitles D-Link
for the "Most Braindead Hardware Vendor 2003" award. And of course
they were also talking about developing another Linux driver for some time,
without any results (although I guess that's because they wanted to
develop it, but were not allowed to, unfortunately, so it's understandable).
IF you dare to release cards with a different incompatible chipset
that doesn't even have proper driver support for a popular alternative OS,
then AT LEAST change the card name in order to let people know and discern
which hardware to avoid like the plague, for heaven's sake!
This is such a <CENSORED>, I could <OUCH, CENSORED!>...
Also, we just learned that D-Link tech support can be very clueless, too:
one guy, after having been advised that his DWL-120+ uses an Atmel
chipset, spent considerable time trying to get this card to work with an
incompatible Linux driver (it's the DWL-120 which uses an Atmel chip -
the DWL-120+ is using an ACX100 in USB mode!).
This proves that D-Link really deserves the award above,
and it also shows that one should avoid D-Link like the plague from now on
(at least until they get rid of their stupid product naming habits),
since they don't seem to know or care about their very own products.
Finally, let me mention that we also really dislike the way how
Texas Instruments handles Linux driver support. It's a really shameful
pity, with delays to be measured in years versus the Windows driver
support, and with poor and buggy binary driver support.
All in all our team would be very grateful to receive proper
development support and cooperation from TI in order to create
proper Linux drivers. That would be The Good Way to do it...
(although admittedly that would still only be the second-best way to do it,
with the best way being to have paid company developers work on a
well-working OSS driver, of course)
After all it's the hardware VENDOR that's earning money via OUR, the
customers', payment, so it should be the damn responsibility of the
hardware vendor to ensure good driver support (if by no other means
than providing sufficient specs to OSS developers), not the other way around!
Just imagine the weird looks of thousands and thousands of Linux users
when they discovered the lack of support for the product that they just
shelled out considerable amounts of money for...
Have fun!
