Why download and compile madwifi

**pgte3** · July 17th, 2008

Recently I got the wireless on my laptop working by downloading and compiling a wireless driver from madwifi (see link).

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=861683

Why is this necessary? Why is the binary equivalent of what I compiled and created not in the ubuntu repositories somewhere.

**Bachstelze** · July 17th, 2008

Madwifi is included with Ubuntu. Most likely, the one you compiled is a newer version.

**pgte3** · July 17th, 2008

I see a package called madwifi-tools within the universe repository. Does this package contain the drivers for the various wireless cards, or is this a collection of tools to work with wifi?

**pgte3** · July 17th, 2008

The description of the madwifi-tools package is:

This package provides userspace tools for the madwifi driver. The tools are required to use and manipulate the madwifi interfaces present in a system.

I do not think this is the drivers, it sounds like tools to work with madwifi drivers.

I am still wondering why the drivers themselves are not available through the repositories?

**Bachstelze** · July 17th, 2008

They are, and they are even installed by default. Please don't make such strong statements when you have no clue, thanks.

http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?se...hardy&arch=any

**pgte3** · July 17th, 2008

I am sorry you interpreted my statements as strong, I am not sure what you meant by strong, but assume that it is not good. It is certainly not my intention to offend or be aggressive. I am simply trying to understand ubuntu.

I see the madwifi driver in the link you provided. When I was searching for madwifi packages the only hit I got was madwifi-tools, the reason for that appears to be the way I searched the repositories. I searched for package name only not description. When I search using description I found the packages you are referring too.

So I guess the answer to my orignal question is that the wireless card I have required a newer driver than what was available in the repositories.