Replicant

Hi.

s s wrote:

what devices does repwifi support?

I think that repwifi works with any wifi dongle supported by the kernel, but the kernel included in the current Replicant ROMs only have compiled drivers for dongles based on the AR9271 chipset. There is also the power consumption limitation, usb dongles consume a lot of current, so wifi will not be stable except on devices with large batteries that are in good condition. Read this link:

https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/WifiAdapter

and what is its current version?

The current version is the latest on the f-droid repository (0.9.1-beta). The one distributed inside Replicant is old and signed with Replicant's key, so it can't be upgraded to the f-droid version. To install 0.9.1-beta on a stable Replicant 6 ROM you need to first uninstall the included version. You can also install my experimental builds that include the 0.9.1-beta, ask at the IRC channel.

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I couldnt find a way to uninstall it from the system, how can I do that?

https://redmine.replicant.us/boards/9/topics/14079

Don't worry about the messeage "Version 0.9.1-beta may be UNSTABLE! Please use with care", it has already demonstrated that it's more stable that the old stable version. Not newer versions are expected, as Replicant is trying to manage external wifi with the standard wifi configuration GUI on future versions.

yes it is battery consuming, but what other way to connect to the internet?

The biggest issue is not battery life, but batteries not giving enough current at power peaks of the dongle, so it will loose connection. The better candidates for external dongles are the Note 2 (n7100) and the tablets supported by Replicant.

The alternatives are using only 2G/3G data or USB reverse tethering (I have not tested it myself). In my case I use the internal wifi with proprietary firmware, but it's something not advocated by the Replicant project and it's not going to be documented here. You can informally ask on IRC or search the web.

yes it is battery consuming, but what other way to connect to the internet?

We are also working on adding USB ethernet support: https://redmine.replicant.us/issues/1889

I have had some success with this reverse tethering app as well: https://github.com/Genymobile/gnirehtet

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There is no open source driver for this chip.
You can install a proprietary driver but in this case, you will not be following the philosophy of replicant.