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Littleodie914

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 9, 2004
1,813
8
Rochester, NY
Hey guys, I just downloaded and installed YDL on my iBook, and am just now painfully realizing that it doesn't come with Airport Extreme drivers. This kinda bugs me, as I really don't want to have to sit down next to my router and ethernet it whenever I want to get on the internet. I've searched around a bit and heard that since the AE card has a Broadcom chipset, which Apple has not released information for, a linux driver cannot be made. While the overwhelming majority of posts concerning this issue stated that a driver would, in fact, be impossible until Apple released the info about it, I was hoping you guys could provide a solution.

Is there any workaround to get the card to work? Like can you get drivers for other cards that will detect and run the AE? (Even if performance isn't that great, I need my internet!) If not, are there any other mac distros (preferrably not live) that are compatible with the AE? Thanks a bunch!
 

Westside guy

macrumors 603
Oct 15, 2003
6,341
4,159
The soggy side of the Pacific NW
If you need the internet, just plug an ethernet cable in. Your wired ethernet port should work just fine. Your modem should work as well.

Yellow Dog doesn't support Airport Extreme. 802.11g support under Linux falls somewhere between abysmal and non-existent for most chipsets (not just the one Apple uses). Wireless card support is chipset-dependent, so you can't just use drivers from another 802.11g card.

To be fair to Yellow Dog, they do have a webpage listing what hardware and features aren't supported - AE is mentioned on there.
 
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