New drivers for LAN, Wi-Fi, audio and video hardware

Medium Tux KL

Network traffic

Linux 2.6.30 is the first version to include the ar9170 Wi-Fi driver for Atheros' 802.11n USB chipset of the same name (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The driver is brand new, but re-uses some of the code from Atheros' otus driver, which was released a few months ago – the developers didn't want to incorporate the latter due to quality issues, however, and decided to develop ar9170 instead, although it doesn't match the functionality of otus yet. Also still some way off technical maturity is the new at76c50x-usb driver for Atmel's old at76c503, at76c505 and at76c505a Wi-Fi chips. In the long term, it is intended to replace the at76_usb driver, which was incorporated into the kernel's staging area with 2.6.28.

The kernel developers extended the drivers for the recent Intel chip-sets to include support for Intel's 1000, 6000 and 6050 Wi-Fi chips (1, 2, 3, 4).

The code in the Wi-Fi subsystem responsible for changing into and out of the suspend modes (suspend to RAM and suspend to disk) was enhanced to make system-wide hibernation more robust. The kernel hackers have also improved the support for runtime energy saving features in modern Wi-Fi hardware both in the Mac80211 Wi-Fi stack and in some drivers (for example 1, 2, 3); further improvements and major restructuring work to the Rfkill framework, which is responsible for the Wi-Fi on/off switches and hotkeys, are expected for 2.6.31.

Code extensions introduced by Oracle developers provide support for the Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) server cluster protocol (documentation). The kernel hackers have adapted the Bluetooth stack's security model to include the changes made with Bluetooth 2.1, and extended it to support Secure Simple Pairing PDF .

Download the Linux kernel

New versions of Linux can be obtained from the Kernel.org servers in the US and in Europe; the contents of these servers are also mirrored on numerous mirrors internationally. However, Linux users who are not familiar with the details of the kernel and its environment should generally not install new Linux drivers and kernels themselves but use the kernels provided by the Linux distributors instead.

Audio and video

The audio drivers of Linux 2.6.30 will be roughly in line with the status of the ALSA 1.0.20 drivers. Among other things, the ASoC (ALSA System on Chip) framework and the HD audio drivers were quite extensively overhauled. The HD audio drivers now offer improved runtime reconfiguration via Sysfs (1, 2, 3).

Innumerable changes were once again made to the V4L/DVB subsystem – there are so many that even the maintainer of this kernel area didn't want to summarise them. One of the items included for the first time is the cx231xx driver for TV hardware with Conextant's series cx231xx chips connected via USB. New are also the hdpvr driver for the Hauppauge HD PVR and the support for the Sony PlayTV DVB-T hardware. Numerous further changes that have been introduced with new drivers or extend the functionality of existing ones can be found in part four of the "What's coming in 2.6.30" mini series of the Kernel Log.

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