December 3, 2009

2.6.32 has been released with 1020 patches touching wireless code.

Among the changes a few worth noting:

• lots of wl1251 fixes, support for the 1271 chip
• orinoco begins conversion to cfg80211
• b43 LP PHY support (BCM4312 devices)
• almost all mac80211 callbacks can now sleep (configure_filter was made able to)
• rndis_wlan uses cfg80211
• rtl8187 got rfkill switch support
• ath9k gets AR9287 support and a large number of enhancements
• wireless is now network namespace aware
• nl80211 testmode command for factory testing/calibration
• cfg80211 gains the ability to connect to APs
• cfg80211 finally verifies that changing channel won't interfere with operation
• cfg80211 drivers now can also parse country IEs
• mac80211 no longer depends on wireless extensions
• mac80211 scanning is much improved
• mac80211 has a tracer now for driver interaction
• mac80211 no longer creates the master netdev wmaster0
• improvements to mac80211's connection loss detection

Quite a number of changes, and not small changes either – for example the ability for cfg80211 to emulate wireless extensions fully now or the LP PHY support in b43.