The other night I was hacking away, compiling kernel patches for my Huawei U8150 until the wee hours of the morning. It all started with tj_style’s mutli-touch gesture patches, and then estebanSannin/JackTheVendicator’s over/underclock patches. I got to thinking, “Hmmm, I could probably add all sorts of performance and usability tweaks into this kernel. If for nothing else than for fun!”

I set off researching and compiling other interesting things, like different IO schedulers, CPU schedulers, RCU implementations, newer hashing algorithms, etc. “It’s Linux,” I thought, “I have the source code and the know how; nobody can stop me!” I had even started the process of updating Huawei’s default 2.6.32.9 kernel sources to the latest mainline 2.6.32-stable updates from kernel.org, patching, compiling, testing, and merging up to 2.6.32.12 when I realized that wireless wasn’t working in my new builds. No problem, I just have to edit the kernel config to tell it to compile the bcm4329 driver as a module.

Mehhhhhhhhhhh!

If only I knew how wrong I was before I wasted four hours futzing around with make files, compiler flags, etc… The IDEOS actually uses a bcm4319 wireless chip set, for which there are no open-source drivers. My ensuing tweet says it all:

What a drag… and I was having fun practicing my git branch/merge fu with all those mainline updates! If you’re reading this, Broadcom, please help a brutha out and release some zesty open-source code for the 4319 chip set! Thanks!