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.
If the above fails, search for the filename on archive.org or legacy package repositories. Verify the tarball’s integrity using a known SHA1 or MD5 checksum if available from a trusted source.
For any current system (kernel 4.x+), use the modern backports package instead: compat-wireless-3.6.8-1.tar.bz2 download
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. The file compat-wireless-3
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.
After downloading, verify the tarball integrity (example – checksums vary by source): Verify the tarball’s integrity using a known SHA1
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.