James Ketrenos announced a new 80211 based driver for the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG network connection adapter, "this new driver uses the new d80211 subsystem previously only available as part of the wireless-dev tree." An earlier incarnation of the driver code was much criticized for its inclusion of a userland binary-only daemon [story], prompting the OpenBSD project to create their own blob-free driver for the card [story]. "The [new] iwlwifi driver for the 3945 does not require the user space daemon, but does require a new microcode image," James explained, "over the past year we were able to make the necessary changes to the microcode used with the 3945 such that we were able to remove the regulatory daemon."

When the question was asked if the driver was going to be pushed for inclusion into the mainline kernel it was noted, "hmmm...I think we need to spend a cycle or so in -mm. 2.6.22 seems more likely for mainline." Pavel Roskin suggested, "iwlwifi is surprisingly good for a just announced driver. It worked for me from the first attempt, and that's the first d80211 driver to do so. In my opinion, it should go to wireless-dev as soon as possible so it can go to -mm together with other drivers."