Re: [Ksummit-discuss] Draft agenda for the kernel summit

[Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:00 AM, Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org> wrote:
> Arnd:

>> My understanding is that MediaTek has improved much recently and their
>> mt76 wireless driver source is available and getting upstreamed (...)

> are sure that Mediatek got better? I am not convinced by that.
>
> I think there is also a large difference in their MiniPCI cards compared to
> their connectivity hub in their SoC. The Bluetooth side for example is
> largely copying existing drivers, hacking their vendor specific behavior
> in and then throwing it over the wall.

When discussing the sadly unsupported MT7630E MiniPCI card
which has both WiFi and Bluetooth Jakub Kicinski elaborated a bit
on the story there:
http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=143815707108278&w=2

It seems Mediatek got a bit of internal struggle, the kernel doing
three different drivers sharing aspects of the same chip(s)
and general mishmash due to a cocktail of factors: organizational,
company consolidation etc, but also due to a few chips,
especially MT7630E, ending up in a technical middle-ground
between two families of chips.

The person writing the MT7630E driver was obviously intending
to upstream it, I can see the beginnings of an upstream attempt
in the source code, but was apparently removed from that task
before s/he could complete it.

Sadly there is a bunch of users stuck with this card. They
(including my daughter) survive by using a forwardport of the
code drop from Mediatek, but who knows how long that thing
will even compile.

Linus Walleij