# Unsupported wifi driver workaround



## Myersj281 (Mar 23, 2020)

Wifi support is the only thing holding me back from switching to FreeBSD from Arch and Manjaro Linux (I have yet to test touchpad support since I don't have wifi to install KDE). I read somewhere that Windows drivers can be used to suppliment missing FreeBSD wifi drivers using something called NDIS. I have the Windows 10 driver on a flash drive so assuming this driver will work for this aproach, how can I get this set up?

I'm using a Lenovo Ideapad330 with a Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 902.11ac PCI wireless card. 

On A side note: I've also read that wifi support is being prioritized in the next major release. Is this true and does it include my card?


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## tingo (Mar 23, 2020)

ndis - you can search this forum for previous attempts. In short: if you can, avoid wasting time on getting NDIS to work under FreeBSD. Your time is much better spent on find a supported wireless network adapter (internal or usb) for your laptop.
Also, if the laptop has wired networking, and that network adapter is supported by FreeBSD it is possible to use that for network connectivity in order to test things.


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## George (Mar 23, 2020)

> FreeBSD provides “native” support for the Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS). It includes ndisgen(8) which can be used to convert a Windows® XP driver into a format that can be used on FreeBSD.



https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/config-network-setup.html

Good old Windows XP.


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## Myersj281 (Mar 23, 2020)

Elazar said:


> https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/config-network-setup.html
> 
> Good old Windows XP.



If my memery proves correct, there are no XP drivers for my device(not from Lenovo.com, anyway). Is there somewhere I can download an XP driver for this card?
EDIT: As for the USB adapter, I have a Tenda Nano that doesn't seem to be supported as far as I can tell.


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## Myersj281 (Mar 23, 2020)

tingo said:


> ndis - you can search this forum for previous attempts. In short: if you can, avoid wasting time on getting NDIS to work under FreeBSD. Your time is much better spent on find a supported wireless network adapter (internal or usb) for your laptop.
> Also, if the laptop has wired networking, and that network adapter is supported by FreeBSD it is possible to use that for network connectivity in order to test things.



I have an ethernet port on this laptop and it's supported by FreeBSD but at the moment it is not practical to use. I would prefer to use ethernet whenever possible in the future, though.


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