linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

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Message-Id: <c8f43e1b-aed1-4b45-ba7c-d896ff66dfa7@app.fastmail.com>
Date:   Fri, 13 Oct 2023 17:36:41 +0200
From:   "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@...db.de>
To:     "Philipp Hortmann" <philipp.g.hortmann@...il.com>,
        "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@...nel.org>, "Kalle Valo" <kvalo@...nel.org>,
        "Greg Kroah-Hartman" <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Cc:     "Nicolas Ferre" <nicolas.ferre@...rochip.com>,
        "Alexandre Belloni" <alexandre.belloni@...tlin.com>,
        "Claudiu Beznea" <claudiu.beznea@...on.dev>,
        "Jakub Kicinski" <kuba@...nel.org>, "Pavel Machek" <pavel@....cz>,
        "David S . Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        "Larry Finger" <Larry.Finger@...inger.net>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-wireless@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org, linux-staging@...ts.linux.dev
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging

On Fri, Oct 13, 2023, at 08:42, Philipp Hortmann wrote:
> On 10/10/23 17:27, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> From: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de> While looking at the old drivers 
>> using the obsolete .ndo_do_ioctl() callback, I found a number of network 
>> drivers that are especially obsolete, in particular for 802.11b 
>> (11Mbit/s) or even older wireless networks, using non-busmaster 
>> ISA/PCMCIA style bus interfaces, and using the legacy wireless extension 
>> ioctls rather than the netlink interfaces that were meant to replace 
>> them in 2007. All of these drivers are obsolete or orphaned.
>
> we should take into account how good the wlan connection is.
> This of course leads to tests on real hardware. I do have a vt6655. 
> Please have a look at the test results below. In a nutshell it is a very 
> bumpy connection you get with vt6655. You can have issues to connect on 
> every channel and data is coming in waves. So sometimes you will almost 
> not notice you have a wlan connection and then it takes very long to 
> load the next site. Ping times up to 80 seconds. Packet losses up to 
> 40%. So I assume all users have gone away from this module as it is not 
> comfortable.
>
> Do you think this helps you?
>
> I do have two vt6656 hardware as well. Are you interested in tests?
> I can do a patch to remove vt6655. Do you think it makes sense?
>
> Thanks for your support.

Hi Philipp,

My vague feeling is that bad performance on its own is not
enough justification to remove the driver without some other
reason. From what I can tell in the logs, Malcolm Priestley
made good progress on cleaning up theses driver, converting it
to mac80211 and sending improvements until 2020.

At the moment, I'd suggest focusing on the drivers that
still use wext (git grep -w iw_handler_def drivers), if we
can show that rtl8192e, rtl8712 or ks7010 have been broken
for a while, removing those would help with removing wext
altogether.

     Arnd