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Date:   Thu, 12 Oct 2023 16:36:26 +0200
From:   "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de>
To:     "Kalle Valo" <kvalo@kernel.org>, "Jakub Kicinski" <kuba@kernel.org>
Cc:     "Greg Kroah-Hartman" <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        "Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@kernel.org>,
        "Nicolas Ferre" <nicolas.ferre@microchip.com>,
        "Alexandre Belloni" <alexandre.belloni@bootlin.com>,
        "Claudiu Beznea" <claudiu.beznea@tuxon.dev>,
        "Pavel Machek" <pavel@ucw.cz>,
        "David S . Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
        "Larry Finger" <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, linux-staging@lists.linux.dev
Subject: Re: [PATCH] [RFC] wireless: move obsolete drivers to staging
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On Thu, Oct 12, 2023, at 13:47, Kalle Valo wrote:
>
> Is anyone willing to submit patches? Use wireless-next as the baseline
> for patches and one driver per commit, please. That way it's easy to
> revert later, if needed (hopefully not).

I can do it, I've already done most of the work for moving the
drivers, so I just need to split up my existing patch and leave out
the bits that get added to drivers/staging.

I'll also send Greg a patch to remove rtl8192u now that we know
that this has been broken for 7 years. Similarly, I'd include
another patch to remove PCMCIA support for libertas, as that
would otherwise be the only remaining 16-bit PCMCIA wlan card,
and I could find no indication of this one ever being popular,
unlike the USB/SDIO/SPI variants of the same device or the
other PCMCIA drivers.

This would leave only a handful of wext implementations in the
tree: ipw2x00, ps3-gelic-wireless, staging/rtl8712, staging/rtl8192e
and staging/ks7010. Since ipw2x00 is apparently still supported
in theory and was rather popular on Pentium-M based systems 20
years ago, this may still need to be converted to cfg80211
before you can remove support for wext style drivers altogether.
ps3-gelic-wireless and rtl8712 are also still maintained but have
a much smaller user base I assume.

      Arnd