[easton]

It's easier than writing a driver for FreeBSD yourself, I suppose, although I'd probably just get a USB Wi-Fi dongle instead of worry about walking into a meeting and my Wi-Fi driver VM crashing :)

(or, just run Linux and run FreeBSD in a VM, but that's no way to support a niche operating system...)

[craftkiller]

You don't need a dongle, just purchase a supported wifi card. I put a supported atheros card in my framework laptop and the wifi works flawlessly, natively. The framework laptop is designed to be opened and have the parts replaced, so its the perfect laptop for doing hardware changes like this.

[Klonoar]

Does this actually support operating on 5GHz, or is it still stuck in the 2.4GHz era? I'm not aware of any FreeBSD-compatible wifi cards that actually do this.

(I would love to be proven wrong, but I'm super tired of people saying "wifi cards work fine on FreeBSD" when the reality is that the speeds are sub-optimal without a way to improve it currently)

[craftkiller]

Yep! Its both 2.4ghz and 5ghz, but only 802.11n which is fine. Certainly not the newest wifi standard, but 802.11n is plenty fast.

dmesg | grep ath:

    [ath_dfs] loaded
    [ath_rate] loaded
    [ath] loaded
    ath0: <Atheros AR946x/AR948x> mem 0x7a200000-0x7a27ffff at device 0.0 on pci2
    ath0: [HT] enabling HT modes
    ath0: [HT] enabling short-GI in 20MHz mode
    ath0: [HT] 1 stream STBC receive enabled
    ath0: [HT] 1 stream STBC transmit enabled
    ath0: [HT] LDPC transmit/receive enabled
    ath0: [HT] 2 RX streams; 2 TX streams
    ath0: AR9460 mac 640.3 RF5110 phy 0.0
    ath0: 2GHz radio: 0x0000; 5GHz radio: 0x0000
    ath0: ath_edma_recv_tasklet: sc_inreset_cnt > 0; skipping
    ath0: ath_edma_recv_tasklet: sc_inreset_cnt > 0; skipping

I confirmed by checking wpa_cli scan_results and I saw my 5ghz-only ssid (not listing the output here for privacy)

Its an AR9462 which I purchased off thinkpenguin

[Klonoar]

Appreciate it! This is helpful and the kind of info I like seeing. :)

[prmoustache]

On the other hands 2.4GHz is perfectly fine for a lot of people. Actually I often select 2.4GHz on purpose at home because 5GHz works really bad with thick walls and I barely get any network in my kitchen and rooftop.

People will say it is easy, setup a mesh network or some powerline adapters but: 1. It is much more expensive 2. It is not practical in an old flat with very few power outlets, especially when you are not the owner.

And I don't really run into use case where running 2.4GHz limits me.

[filmgirlcw]

I think the problem is that there aren’t many modern wireless cards with official FreeBSD support, so you’re stuck using a specialized dongle or Ethernet if you want to use FreeBSD on a laptop.

[trasz]

It’s also way better from a security point of view - there have been WiFi driver bugs, so there are going to be more of them.