On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 12:53:10 -0400 (EDT), Jude DaShiell <jdash...@panix.com> wrote:
> It may have, but the proprietary software is unnecessary if you use > archlinux to install it and get it up and running. It doesn't matter what distribution of GNU/Linux you use- if there is no free firmware available for the device, there is no free firmware available for the device. wpa_supplicant is just a program used to authenticate with WPA-encrypted networks over a wireless LAN interface. It still requires underlying firmware for the operating system to be able to control the device. The reason it worked out of the box in Arch is because the Arch kernel is mainline Linux, which has proprietary blobs, unlike Debian's de-blobbed kernel or Linux-libre.
