bes2600 driver

[biketool]

The firmware and the kernel driver are two different things. You need both to have working WiFi.

To clarify that even in the old PCMCIA era everything post Orinoco card time period almost to all WiFi devices need a firmware to be uploaded at wifi chip bootup, the firmware is an accursed binary blob and probably has to be that way to meet FCC rules as it sets the limits of the protocol including what channels can be used in different countries etc.  The driver package will have the firmware and upload it at the boot time.  Both the driver and firmware need to have a license permitting their use in a free(as in beer) OS but those black-box blobs do keep the system from being fully FOSS.  One way we see WiFi modularization is via an ESP32 board which has it's own OS and it handles uploading firmware and gives the user some mode and AP selection tools and a simple dumb data line to a black boxed modem like device.



I wish there was some sort of firmware hacking community similar to the libreboot community but I know of none.  Current consumer and community software defined radio is in no way able to replicate the nearly miraculous  bandwidth we get from the wifi protocol on ISM bands.