question regarding qca2066 and qca206x (Steam Deck OLED/Galileo) on upstream kernels

[Matthew Schwartz]

On Tue, May 21, 2024 at 4:49 AM Kalle Valo <kvalo at kernel.org> wrote:
>
> Matthew Schwartz <njtransit215 at gmail.com> writes:
>
> >> Is the mismatch between file/directory structure for QCA2066 and the
> >> upstream QCA206X I had to add to the upstream ath11k firmware going to
> >> be an issue? Also, QCA206X seems to be missing Notice.txt. Will this
> >> cause any issues?
> >>
> >
> > Sorry there is a slight typo here. To clarify: Is the mismatch between
> > file/directory structure for upstream QCA2066 and the Valve QCA206X an
> > issue. I described the wrong folder as the upstream folder in my
> > original reply.

Whoops... my last reply missed Reply All so I'm resending here. It's
my first time using lkml so apologies...

>
> So from what I have seen so far the situation seems to be this:
>
> Steam has some ath11k hack patches to add QCA2066 support to an older
> Linux kernel and they also have a separate firmware release. I do not
> know where they got them from.
>
> In Linux upstream ("kernel.org") we added initial QCA2066 support for
> ath11k in Linux v6.9. We also provided the firmware[1] which will be
> also submitted to linux-firmware.git in the near future.
>
> The ath11k upstream version uses different directory structure as the
> hack patches, which is not uncommon. Basically using hack patches is at
> your own risk and no compatibility is guarenteed, of course. But once
> the support is in official Linux kernel we take backwards compatibility
> very seriously.

That makes sense to me.

>
> I want to also mention that even if Steam's ath11k firmware version
> might work, I still recommend to use the firmware from our repo[1]. I do
> not know what changes Steam's firmware version has and it possible might
> be incompatible with kernel.org driver. In this mailing list we only
> support firmware releases from [1].

I will go along with your suggestion of installing the firmware
properly (rather than using copy paste) by using the instructions you
provided in your previous reply, and skipping the Valve firmware of
currently unknown origin. Per your advice, I will also file a proper
bug report for this issue if I confirm that I installed the upstream
firmware properly from the repo that you've linked to me, and if it
still fails at that point.

>
> [1] https://git.codelinaro.org/clo/ath-firmware/ath11k-firmware/-/tree/main/QCA2066/hw2.1?ref_type=heads
>

Once again, thanks for all the assistance you've provided here,
especially as it's technically out of scope given the QCA206X's
origins and my install process that I described in my previous mail.
I'd really like to switch to using upstream work here rather than rely
on hacks like symlinking to QCA206X, so I'll do my best to follow up
and report my findings.
> --
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>
> https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/developers/documentation/submittingpatches