LinuxKPI 802.11 and Native Wireless Update
Contact: Bjoern A. Zeeb <bz@FreeBSD.org>
Contact: The FreeBSD wireless mailing list <wireless@FreeBSD.org>
This report focuses on the efforts using permissively licensed Linux wireless drivers, mostly unmodified, on FreeBSD, as well as preparing the native net80211 stack for support of newer standards.
Work is ongoing for Mediatek mt76-based PCIe card support.
LinuxKPI 802.11 (linuxkpi_wlan(4)) updates were committed for scanning and beacon handling improvements and more robustness.
LinuxKPI updates were done in order to import newer versions of iwlwifi(4), rtw88(4), and rtw89(4) drivers. Work on suspend and resume for LinuxKPI-based wireless drivers has a possible solution which will need community testing and feedback. Both updates were blocked by out-of-tree drm LinuxKPI PCI conflicts and problems were just resolved before EuroBSDCon 2025 thus the work will likely appear beginning of 25Q4.
I gave a talk on wireless at EuroBSDCon 2025 and had a good chat with wireless people from NetBSD and OpenBSD.
There is increasing interest again in getting brcmfmac support sorted, as well as more requests for ath11k.
Sponsor: The FreeBSD Foundation
Last modified on: October 5, 2025 by Maxim Konovalov
