The file compat-wireless-3.6.8-1.tar.bz2 is a legacy tarball from the compat-wireless project (later renamed to backports ). It provides a set of wireless drivers and subsystems that allow newer Linux wireless drivers to be compiled and used on older kernel versions.
git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/backports/backports.git Once downloaded, the typical build process is:
After downloading, verify the tarball integrity (example – checksums vary by source): compat-wireless-3.6.8-1.tar.bz2 download
For any new or production project, do not use this old package . Instead, download the latest backports release from kernel.org backports . Use compat-wireless-3.6.8-1.tar.bz2 only for maintaining legacy hardware in an air-gapped or strictly controlled environment.
This specific version (3.6.8-1) is based on the Linux 3.6.8 kernel drivers and is designed to backport those drivers to kernel versions as old as 2.6.24–2.6.32, depending on the specific driver. The file compat-wireless-3
Title: Legacy Wireless Driver Compatibility Package – compat-wireless-3.6.8-1
wget https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/stable/v3.6.8/compat-wireless-3.6.8-1.tar.bz2 Note: Older releases may have been moved to the older/ directory on kernel.org. Instead, download the latest backports release from kernel
tar -tjf compat-wireless-3.6.8-1.tar.bz2 | head -10 md5sum compat-wireless-3.6.8-1.tar.bz2 A valid tarball will extract a directory named compat-wireless-3.6.8-1/ containing Makefile , compat/ , drivers/ , etc.
For any current system (kernel 4.x+), use the modern backports package instead: