2.6.23rc1+ kernels are "Penumbra-ready"
The mac80211 (aka Devicescape or dscape or d80211) IEEE80211 software stack is set to replace the current 80211 implementation in the kernel. We have provided patches to the mac80211 project which have now been accepted

and have made it into the official Linus git tree as of July 16th 2007

.
Therefore a kernel built from current Linus git, or from 2.6.23rc1 onwards (expected in a few weeks) should have all the kernel support for Penumbra built in with no patching or special drivers needed. Over the next few months distros will upgrade their kernel from the Linus tree and will therefore support Penumbra out of the box.
Because many common chipsets are supported in mac80211 already, and new chipset support will use it, we are deprecating the driver patch sets for the old ieee80211 stack and will support mac80211-based drivers only, so we can take advantage of needing zero patches to forthcoming distro and vanilla-based kernels.
The end results are you can only use Penumbra if your wireless device has a mac80211-based driver, currently:
| adm8211 | Found in DWL-650 |
| bcm43xx | Found in laptops and some PC Card wireless adapters |
| iwl3945 | Found in many recent centrino laptops |
| iwl4965 | Found in very recent Centrino laptops |
| p54 | Prism 54 chipset, eg NetGear? WG511 |
| rt2×00 | Range of Ralink-based devices, including some versions of Belkin USB 80211g sticks |
| zd1211rw | Found in many USB sticks, including other versions of Belkin 80211g sticks |
...and if your wireless device is supported, you need no patches at all: you can use your normal distro kernel without alterations from 2.6.23rc1 kernels onward.
penumbrad Usermode Daemon
The
penumbrad Usermode Daemon provides the upper layers of the protocol and encryption and tracking services, as well as the https server that the user interacts with.
Git repository
Fedora Core 6 Snapshot i686 RPMS:
Compiling penumbrad needs libgcrypt, openssl, libgpg-error and libfec. The first three are available on any normal distro, but libfec is a bit less common. The original project page is here:
http://www.ka9q.net/code/fec/, for convenience you can get it locally from above as FC6 (S)RPMS or a tarball together with a patch needed to compile it.