Finally! Broadcom, through Henry Ptasinski, proudly announced a few hours ago the immediate availability of the first open source Wireless driver for Linux-based operating systems. The driver is designed for Broadcom's latest generation 11n chipsets.

Believe it or not, Broadcom has finally decided to open source its wireless drivers for Linux users! Broadcom's wireless chips are used in almost all modern netbooks and laptops, therefore this announcement comes as a blessing for all Linux users.

"Broadcom would like to announce the initial release of a fully-open Linux driver for it's latest generation of 11n chipsets. The driver, while still a work in progress, is released as full source and uses the native mac80211 stack."

"It supports multiple current chips (BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225) as well as providing a framework for supporting additional chips in the future, including mac80211-aware embedded chips." - said Henry Ptasinski in the announcement.

The open source Broadcom wireless driver should be available in the next stable release of the Linux kernel 2.6. This also means that all Linux users will no longer have to search for tutorials, workarounds and other tips & tricks to get their Broadcom wireless cards to work!

"The README and TODO files included with the sources provide more details about the current feature set, known issues, and plans for improving the driver."

Broadcom's open source wireless driver currently supports the BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225 chips, but it will also support additional chips in the near future.

The GIT sources of the open source Broadcom driver for Linux are available right now in the staging-next git tree, at:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/staging-next-2.6.git

in the drivers/staging/brcm80211 folder.