From owner-freebsd-wireless@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Aug 26 10:25:58 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 16FE2470; Tue, 26 Aug 2014 10:25:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from blue.qeng-ho.org (blue.qeng-ho.org [217.155.128.241]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (Client did not present a certificate) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id A14FD3525; Tue, 26 Aug 2014 10:25:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: from fileserver.home.qeng-ho.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fileserver.home.qeng-ho.org (8.14.7/8.14.5) with ESMTP id s7QAPloZ061268; Tue, 26 Aug 2014 11:25:48 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from freebsd@qeng-ho.org) Message-ID: <53FC60AB.1060805@qeng-ho.org> Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 11:25:47 +0100 From: Arthur Chance User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; FreeBSD amd64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: atar , "freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org" , "freebsd-questions@freebsd.org" Subject: Re: TL-WN722N support on FreeBSD. References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-BeenThere: freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: "Discussions of 802.11 stack, tools device driver development." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 10:25:58 -0000 On 26/08/2014 08:32, atar wrote: > Hi there! > > According to what's written in the following URLs: > http://forums.freebsd.org/viewtopic.php?t=41581 , > https://wiki.freebsd.org/dev/ath_hal(4)/HardwareSupport > (under the 'Chipsets I won't be working on' section) the > TL-WN722N TP-LINK wireless dongle isn't supported on freeBSD > since its chipset is based on the AR9271 chipset which isn't > supported by FreeBSD. > > Now, my question is, since the above mentioned device is supported > by Linux via a special atheros firmware module, and since FreeBSD > provides a Linux virtualization, will this device work on a FreeBSD > system by its Linux virtualization capability? I'm not familiar with the Atheros firmware, but the likely answer is no. Linux virtualization (probably better described as emulation) is at the user space level, i.e. it mimics the interface of Linux syscalls. Device drivers work in kernel space, and the FreeBSD kernel has very different internals from Linux.