rtl8192e: why do we need two drivers

[Michael Blinov]

Hi

(I hope this is the right mailing list to bring up this topic.
If I should use a different list, I'd really appreciate if you could let me know.)

I've got a samsung netbook (N140) with the Realtek 8192e wifi card.
And I am trying to make it work with ubuntu (kernel 2.6.35).

There seem to be two versions of this driver floating around.
1) One that is currently included in linux kernel (staging area).
2) And another available from Realtek corporation (for some reason it's not shown on their web site, but can be requested from their support, the latest version is "http://people.debian.org/~benh/rtl-wlan/rtl8192e_linux_2.6.0015.1013.2010.tar.gz"). VoRia (www.voria.org) is doing a great job of wrapping it as a "samsung-wireless" package for our convenience.

There've been lots of discussions about these drivers in various forums
(e.g.  http://www.voria.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=3) and the general
consensus seem to be that the in-kernel version of the driver does NOT work 
while the realtek's one DOES. I personally played with them for about a year by now,
and I could never make the in-kernel driver work satisfactory (only connects in about 75% cases),
while the realtek driver gives a very stable performance.

I appreciate that you've probably put a lot of effort in the in-kernel version of the driver
and it probably started when the realtek's one wasn't even available.
But now when the realtek's driver improved so much, 
I wonder if it would be better for everyone if the linux kernel simply switched
to the realtek version of the driver.
I personally don't mind using the "samsung-wireless" package but
I think that we should try to make linux as easy-to-use and
works-out-of-box as possible. So it would be best if people could
use the driver that comes with the kernel without the need for
any extra packages.

What do you think?

Regards,
Michael