Longtime Linux Wireless Developer Passes Away

2 years ago by Ben "Werner" Zucker to c/linux

nukul4r 166 points 2 years ago

This is unexpected, and hits really hard. I tried to get one of his drivers running with a fairly new USB wifi adapter, I made a Github issue, and he was super kind and helpful. This was only in May, it feels unreal to read this news. What a terrible loss, my deepest condolences to his family and friends.

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mojo_raisin 115 points 2 years ago

Larry Finger, your work has made a significant positive impact on my life and I'm sure many others. Thank you.

Now can you work on a driver to allow communication between the living and the dead?

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possiblylinux127 55 points 2 years ago

Can we get developers from the heavens to maintain FOSS?

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spacedout 43 points 2 years ago

Upstream

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Steamymoomilk 19 points 2 years ago

Bro you dont wana be bottom stream, Theres lots of daemons

Lmao

path: 0 10791186 10791836 10793667 10793900, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 0
MXX53 81 points 2 years ago

If a random reddit post is correct and he was 84 years old, I can only hope to have the same drive and mental ability at that age. RIP.

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ghostface 21 points 2 years ago

I still say the elderly is ripe for development. Not having an issue sitting or standing for long periods of time. Plus the constant problem solving.

There should be a way to get seniors to work with and foss keystone foss projects.

Not to mention after they start its the monthly group meeting...

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JetpackJackson 37 points 2 years ago

Holy cow I can't believe it. RIP

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MajorHavoc 29 points 2 years ago

I hope I'm rocking that hard at 84.

My next non-alcohol bubbly drink will be in your honor, Larry.

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lord_ryvan 20 points 2 years ago

non-alcohol bubbly drink

Sounds like a good step towards rocking hard at 84.

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autotldr 28 points 2 years ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


The Linux kernel community has sadly lost one of its longtime, prolific contributors to the wireless (WiFi) drivers.

His wife shared the news of Larry Finger's passing this weekend on the linux-wireless mailing list in a brief statement.

Larry Finger began contributing originally to the Broadcom BCM43XX driver back in the day and over the years has contributed a lot to Linux WiFi drivers.

His more recent contributions had been around the RTW88, RTW89, R8188EU, R8712, RTLWIFI, B43 and other Linux networking drivers.

In part to his contributions, the Linux wireless hardware support has come a long way over the past two decades...

Longtime Linux users will certainly remember the days of struggling with WiFi support, resorting to NDISWrapper for using Windows WiFi drivers on Linux, and other headaches compared to today's largely trouble-free wireless hardware support.


The original article contains 183 words, the summary contains 137 words. Saved 25%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

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MajorHavoc 7 points 2 years ago

Great summary bot, as ever. But missed this absolute gem from the comments:

"Thanks for helping me wardrive and steal the WiFi from that dentist, Larry."

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potentiallynotfelix 25 points 2 years ago

im pretty sure i've used his drivers one time or another across my older macbooks or in one of my usb cards. RIP to Larry, I'm sure the linux community will miss his amazing contributions.

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narc0tic_bird 25 points 2 years ago

RIP and thank you for your contributions!

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Steamymoomilk 19 points 2 years ago

Based dude May he rest in piece as a fucking legend

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Duckling5746 19 points 2 years ago

Wow Larry contributed to these old Broadcom drivers?! I'm using them to this day on my old macbook. RIP

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bookcrawler 18 points 2 years ago path: 0 10791357, hotness: undefined, score: 18, children: 1
foofiepie 3 points 2 years ago

I shall pay out of thanks for Larry making my Broadcom chip work in at least 2 devices. Is there an aggregator/list for other key contributors?

RIP Larry.

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blindbunny 17 points 2 years ago

Is this the dude that made ndiswapper actually work?

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UserMeNever 16 points 2 years ago

I could not get this to quote right so I used code, but look at the footer that is unfortunate.

* Re: Larry Finger
  2024-06-22 23:01 Larry Finger Denise Finger
@ 2024-06-23  5:47 ` Sirius
  2024-06-23 16:15 ` Rafał Miłecki
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 3+ messages in thread
From: Sirius @ 2024-06-23  5:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Denise Finger; +Cc: linux-wireless

On lör, 2024/06/22 at 18:01:23 GMT, Denise Finger wrote:
> This is to notify you that Larry Finger, one of your developers, passed
> away on June 21st.

Sincere condolences and our deepest sympathies for your loss.

-- 
Kind regards,

/S

https://lore.kernel.org/...

If the is something better. I hope you are there.

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lord_ryvan 6 points 2 years ago

Being used to tone tags, that /S signature felt so weird at first.

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Cyber 11 points 2 years ago

I'm struggling with what appears to be buggy wifi on an old Lenovo laptop... I spent a moment just looking at the logs and appreciating whoever has spent time and energy trying to get this working, probably reverse engineering without any support... I wonder if that was Larry...?

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foremanguy92_ 9 points 2 years ago

I would like to thank him for everything, just thx ❤️ RIP

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Ascend910 9 points 2 years ago

F for respect

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BurningTurtle 5 points 2 years ago

He will be remembered for what he did for this community. RIP.

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grapemix 2 points 2 years ago

I hope we have a ceremony to pay our respects on pioneers like Larry.

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Kristof12 1 point 2 years ago

F

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