[colug-432] Intel Centrino

[Angelo McComis]

Tom,

There was a period in history where Intel "banned" Centrino on laptops from
running Linux.

How can they "ban" an OS from running on a chip? Surely they just want to
make chips and sell them, right?  It's actually aimple -- they wrap it in
license agreement with the manufacturers, that a manufacturer using their
chips won't put said chips on a laptop not running an approved OS that has
the hardware hooks that can do power management.

Why the fuss?  Intel brought out the Centrino brand to market a "low power
consumption" product. They felt that without the power management at the OS
layer, their brand would disappoint users if the power management
capabilities could not be exercised the same way on Linux as in Windows.

Once Linux 2.6.8 came out, which brought power management capabilities for
Linux into the 21st century, Intel lifted this "ban" on Linux/Centrino.

Because of this sordid history, finding support for anything circa 2006-and
before will not be an easy task.

HTH.

Angelo




On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 12:10 AM, tom <thomas.w.cranston at gmail.com> wrote:

> Whats with Intel Centrino? Linux does not seem to like it. I decided to
> load XP PRO on my Latitude D600, so I could see if the Intel BG2200
> wireless card would function.
>
> A little back story. I installed retroprecise 5.4.3 on it as nothing
> else Linux would install with the Centrino except DSL. The Linux driver
> did not work well with the wireless. Poorly. I decided to use the
> Ndiswrapper. I tried lots of appropriate windows drivers to no avail. I
> then thought install XP and see which driver is running the wireless,
> then use that driver on the drive that has retroprecise.
>
> I decided to install SolidWorks on the drive I put XP on while I was at
> it. That Windows software did not like the centrino either!!
>
> Tom
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