14.3; add a note about updates to wireless networking
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Authored by bz on May 13 2025, 11:39 PM.

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bofh
ziaee

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R9:fc969cfb5fea: 14.3; add a note about updates to wireless networking

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R9 FreeBSD doc repository

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bz created this revision.May 13 2025, 11:39 PM

Herald added a subscriber: ziaee. · View Herald TranscriptMay 13 2025, 11:39 PM

bz requested review of this revision.May 13 2025, 11:39 PM

Harbormaster completed remote builds in B64154: Diff 155422.May 13 2025, 11:39 PM

ziaee added inline comments.May 13 2025, 11:55 PM

website/content/en/releases/14.3R/relnotes.adoc
218	The chipset generation is very obscure. Is this the Intel Wi-Fi 6 series?

bz marked an inline comment as done.May 14 2025, 12:03 AM

bz added inline comments.

website/content/en/releases/14.3R/relnotes.adoc
218	It's what Intel calls them. It's what we call the firmware flavor. We did the same for the iwlwifi.4 man page in D50319. It's approximately "AX" series and newer. The problem is that some (but not all) 9xxx are also part of this so we cannot just say, e.g., AX200 and newer or 9xxx and newer. On the other hand the list is too long to list them all.

bz marked an inline comment as done.May 14 2025, 12:05 AM

bz added inline comments.

website/content/en/releases/14.3R/relnotes.adoc
218	Sorry, pressed submit too early. So no, it starts somewhere in the WiFi-5 (AC) series; but again doesn't cover it all.

ziaee added inline comments.May 14 2025, 12:48 AM

website/content/en/releases/14.3R/relnotes.adoc
218	I know you are a man of precision, so I feel like this suggestion is going to be cringe, but I'm thinking about the diversity of the release notes audience. How's: The man:iwlwifi[4] wireless driver is the first to make use of these new features supporting 802.11ac for Intel Wi-Fi 6 and later hardware. (Or similar) I know it's imprecise, but a great deal of people will read this and get very excited instead of really a very small portion of them stopping and searching for engineer targeted documentation. It's better for it to be easy to understand at first glance than to be precise I think in this type of document. That makes sense. I was just thinking the Relnotes are read by people who that information is not so accessible to. E.g. a Google result for "Intel wifi chipset generation 22000" doesn't show anything that would probably be legible to say, discord mods. On the discord I regularly help a diverse audience trying FreeBSD that doesn't know about e.g. Ax211, they're like "it's wifi 6", because that's what the mfg tells them. Many of those users actually stick around and ~~drive me crazy refusing to read doc~~ are able to get gaming working, and think they have a niche OS and it's pretty cool. Now I'm skeptical of the value of attracting non engineering/production users who don't even file bug reports, but maybe that's another discussion entirely. This announcement will definitely end up in all the brainrot tech news that nerdy kids read.

bz added inline comments.May 15 2025, 10:08 AM

website/content/en/releases/14.3R/relnotes.adoc
218	Agreed. I'll do this user friendly. "Intel WiFi 22000" does show things though. What about: The man:iwlwifi[4] wireless driver is the first to make use of these new features supporting 802.11ac for some Intel Wi-Fi 5, and all of Intel Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 hardware. What's the issue about AX211? That should just work (on a modern release at least with a/b/g and then for 14.3 with 11n and 11ac). But maybe if there's issue drop me an email; doesn't belong here.