Airport Extreme in Linux
I am writing this blog entry from my iBook G4 with a wireless connection from Linux, with no external wireless device. That's right, you heard me correctly.
The Broadcom 43xx Linux Driver has made this possible. See this LWN article for a good starting place.
I stubbornly compile my own kernel so it wasn't as simple as installing
bcm43xx-modules-2.6.15, but with module-assistant it wasn't hard either. The
only trick was knowing to compile the softmac module and install its headers.
Something like this should work:
apt-get install bcm43xx-source dpatch
m-a -t a-i ieee80211softmac
dpkg -i /usr/src/ieee80211softmac-headers*deb
m-a -t a-i bcm43xx
modprobe ieee80211_crypt_wep
modprobe bcm43xx
ip link set up eth1
iwconfig eth1 channel 1 essid fugal key restricted yourkeyhere
udhcpc -i eth1
It's still in the not-for-the-weak-of-heart stage, but it seems to work well to me.