hmm
Normally I'd say it has to be using a Realtek RTL8187B, RTL8187L, RTL8187,
AR9170, AR9271, or soon, the AR7010+AR9280.
However I forgot about the Ralink G era USB chipsets RT2500USB/RT2571 being
free software friendly. Keep in mind I haven't confirmed this as fact
recently and my memory could be foggy- I also can't recall anybody here
having had an adapter with one and having mentioned it working with a 100%
free distro- but I did just take a quick look and there is no firmware and
its driver portion is under a free software license (and there were more
firmware-less devices back then). It's also in the 2.6.24+ kernel so should
work already if its this adapter uses this particular chipset(s) (note: short
of the device ID for the specific adapter being absent in the code).
I don't believe I've ever had the pleasure of using a dongle with the chipset
(actually, I take that back, but it was back in 2005 or maybe 2006 and I
believe the only USB wifi adapter at that time I encountered that was
actually free software friendly). Other issue is it wasn't a 100% free distro
back then... so I can't be 100% confident, but what I recall is it was one of
the few that worked and one of the few that had a native driver and I believe
was/and is a free driver.
On a side note I was actually working at one of the major companies producing
one of the leading distributions of the day :), but fortunately just as an
intern, as they were very lost on the importance of the freedom bit (I did
later turn down two job offers from them). If I had it to do over again I'd
have invested my time and energy at a different organization. Good move on my
part overall, but a bit of a mistake.. as to where I should have been
looking.
