@voltrina @dushman You are been lied to - Intel Wi-Fi cards are specifically designed to always take the users freedom with proprietary software.

Intel cards contain a malicious maskROM circuit (malicious circuits are just as unacceptable as malicious software) that implements a bootloader that checks the signature of software to load, to make sure it's proprietary software from intel and not a free replacement.

That's right, Intel Wi-Fi cards are designed to be cryptographically impossible to write free replacement software for!


ath9k cards are just as proprietary hardware wise, as they also contain maskROM circuits (a larger amount of circuits, but that's irrelevant really), but ath9k cards don't appear to contain any malicious circuits and you can use them with a 100% free driver, therefore unlike Intel Wi-Fi cards, ath9k cards respect your freedom.


If somehow such crypto was to be broken on the Intel Wi-Fi cards (I doubt it, as I believe it's properly done RSA) and a free replacement was written, the result would be a card just as proprietary as an ath9k card, except with more convenience, as you could write all of the driver to no longer handle Wi-Fi like garbage (due to the limited clocking range of the PLL's, the likeliness of bandpass filters and the hardware design, Intel Wi-Fi cards could not be a generic SDR, they could just do Wi-Fi).

That frankly isn't going to happen, as everyone who cares about freedom just grabs a cheap ath9k card and plugs it in and it just works and works well.


Also, if you don't like maskROM that contains microprocessor instructions, I recommend the ath5k cards, as they contain no microprocessor.