Purism Decides on Wireless Qualcomm Atheros 802.11n over 802.11ac

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Todd Weaver

Founder and CEO
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Purism decided on Qualcomm Atheros chips, primarily since they use free and open source firmware, and have supported the community by writing free software drivers released under the ISC license.

• Wikipedia shows comparisons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-source_wireless_drivers#Linux_drivers_for_802.11_.22wireless.22
• The Linux kernel shows support: https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/drivers/net/wireless/ath
• 802.11n supported in ath9k with free software: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k
• 802.11ac supported in ath10k requiring a nonfree firmware blob (YUCK): http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath10k

Purism, strictly sticking to its philosophy would only include the ath9k supported chipsets, and will work with the ath10k developers to create a free software driver to replace the nonfree firmware blob within the ath10k driver.

• NGFF (M.2) uses: Atheros QCNFA222 NGFF 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4GHz/5GHz
• Half-Height MiniPCIE uses: Atheros AR9845 802.11a/b/g/n 2.4GHz/5GHz