Years later, compat-wireless will be replaced by a proper backports framework. The Git repo will go read-only. Newer engineers will never know the thrill of forcing a 3.6 driver to run on a 3.15 kernel by sheer stubborness and macro abuse.
Back in 2010, before driver backporting was slick, compat-wireless was the duct tape for duct tape. It was a project that let you take a new kernel’s wireless drivers and compile them against an old kernel’s APIs. It was ugly, it was hacky, and it had saved her hide once in college when her Broadcom card refused to behave. compat wireless
She starts the ritual. modprobe -r iwlwifi . modprobe iwlwifi . Nothing. She downgrades the firmware. Nothing. She considers, for a terrifying half-second, compiling a whole older kernel from source. Years later, compat-wireless will be replaced by a