> i'm neww in opensolaris, and i was wondering if i can > use linux wireless drivers (wifiway 0.8), in > opensolaris, i have a broadcom NIC, if it's possible > how do i do it? Thank you very much!!
Not generally; two problems: first, the way the drivers connect up to the rest of the OS is different enough that they wouldn't work, and second, the GPL license of Linux is usually thought to be incompatible with many other open source licenses, including Sun's CDDL. If you built your own, it wouldn't matter, but redistributing binaries built with both linked together would be a big no-no. Solaris x86 _can_ sometimes use Windows networking drivers, by a mechanism similar to how Linux can; see http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/laptop/wireless/ndis/ IIRC, that may not work on 64-bit kernels, since Solaris x86-64 has conventions incompatible with Windows drivers as to which registers may be used by drivers. NDIS has been used with some Windows drivers for Broadcom AFAIK, and from prior comments, sort of works, by may not work well enough to satisfy a lot of people. And I think the talk has been that Broadcom isn't likely to come up with specs for their chips. The most commonly suggested solution I've seen is to replace the wifi card with one that uses a supported chipset. You'll have to look for the rest without me - I'm not into x86 much most of the time. Before you ask why Solaris x86 can't be more compatible with Linux or Windows, consider that Solaris was on x86 first in something like May '93, and already (for its time) fairly complete even then*. Windows NT 3.1 hadn't been released yet, and Linux, while it existed, wasn't at 1.0 yet. Historically, Solaris has been more about not breaking customer's (binary) apps than with being maximally compatible with other OSs, or having the most x86 hardware drivers either for that matter (although there have certainly been lots of improvements on availability of cross-platform apps and lots more new drivers in the last few years). * although Solaris on either SPARC or x86 was not particularly stable as of versions below say 2.3, and then only with lots of patches. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)#Versions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Microsoft_Windows#Timeline http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Linux#Chronolog http://opensolaris.org/os/community/on/dev_solaris/qual_death_spiral/ So there's some history behind doing things a certain way, backwards compatible and trying to achieve and then maintain a high level of stability, ahead of things like getting new drivers written and added rapidly; although the obstacles to new drivers these days are perhaps more with getting specs for chipsets, and other "intellectual property" issues than anything else. This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-help mailing list [email protected]
