Compat Wireless Here

Back in 2010, before driver backporting was slick, compat-wireless was the duct tape for duct tape. It was a project that let you take a new kernel’s wireless drivers and compile them against an old kernel’s APIs. It was ugly, it was hacky, and it had saved her hide once in college when her Broadcom card refused to behave.

She pushes her patch to the company’s Git server at 11:47 PM, just under the wire. compat wireless

But Anjali will remember. And every time a kernel update breaks her Wi-Fi—which happens less often now, but still does—she smiles, opens a terminal, and whispers to no one in particular: Back in 2010, before driver backporting was slick,

She starts the ritual. modprobe -r iwlwifi . modprobe iwlwifi . Nothing. She downgrades the firmware. Nothing. She considers, for a terrifying half-second, compiling a whole older kernel from source. She pushes her patch to the company’s Git

The year is 2014. Linus Torvalds has just released the Linux kernel 3.15, and somewhere in a cluttered home office in Bangalore, a young systems engineer named Anjali lets out a groan. Her Lenovo X220—a stalwart machine she’s kept alive with duct tape and open-source devotion—has just lost its mind. Or rather, its Wi-Fi.