Re: [Trisquel-users] WiFi on Macbook Air 5-2 (13", 2012) not working

[chris]

Atheros designed the chipset and there are a handful of manufacturers which  
then brand them for companies, ie why you can find adapters with the same  
chipset/design from different companies. There are differences between what  
we sell (ThinkPenguin) and say Sony. We use the same chipset and support that  
chipset throughout the life of the product. Sony (as an example) is going to  
change chipsets so depending on which version you get (this is not clearly  
advertised, that is even when it appears to be, because the retailers, etc  
don't update there info, because the model numbers haven't changed, and even  
"Sony" won't necessarily have updated it, etc).

This is why ThinkPenguin was founded. To provide consistency in the  
availability and access to hardware that is free software friendly. And when  
there isn't anything available (ie modern 802.11N chipset with free software  
support) we shoot to come up with a solution. Be it talking with the  
designers (not the manufacturers, because there not the ones really in  
control, they don't posses the copyrights), filing bug reports, and following  
up on them to get distributions to support the chipset, etc. (as an example  
Fedora, CentOS, and Redhat recently got support for AR9170 because we got in  
touch with the right people, just this tiny little thing made all the  
difference, as despite multiple bug reports Redhat had done nothing to fix  
the easy-to-solve bug, ie missing firmware).