On Sun, 9 Apr 2000, Albert D. Cahalan wrote:
>
> David S. Miller writes:
>
> We ought to admit to not having solved this problem:
>
> 1. User has Linux installed today.
> 2. New hardware is designed, marketed, built, and sold.
> 3. User buys new hardware and installs it.
> 4. Hardware is a numb chunk of PC board, chips, and connectors.
>
> With the Windows OS, a user could install binary drivers from
> a CD-ROM included with the hardware. Linux does not currently
> play well with hardware upgrades, unless you know how to download
> and compile a recent kernel.
>
> I can see where we are currently headed. The CD-ROM that comes
> with new hardware will have "Red Hat 7.0" drivers. These will
> only work with the 2.4.8-ac4 kernel, and only when that kernel
> is compiled with the same options used by Red Hat.
>
> Hardware vendors can not expect users to know about compiling.
> It would be very dangerous to have hardware vendors supplying
> whole kernel upgrades, but what else can they do?
Don't forget that for common types of hardware - network cards, SCSI
adapters, etc. - that it really isn't too hard to make SRPMs that compile
modules to work with a whole series of kernel. Pretty much any drive can
be seen as an ordinary app, except that it's loaded into kernel space (via
insmod, modprobe), and has to have SOME access to some extra features like
IRQ allocation, port I/O, and memory management. There really isn't that
much tying it directly into the kernel unless these interfaces change. And
they do. But not overnight usually.
I've had to compile a few module packages to get full use out of my
hardware - but it wasn't very hard. And this process could certainly be
automated by something like SRPMs or scripts etc.
I think hardware manufacturers really just have to wake up to the fact
that releasing specs is not a bad thing. Heck, someone will probably write
drivers FOR them if they do this. And no, their competition is not going
to suddenly gain a massive advantage for seeing the driver source for
hardware that is already pretty much obsolete by the time it gets to
market. Don't tell me that hardware designers aren't already working on
the next few designs by the time the current one is released :)
Anyway sorry to ramble, and most people on this list probably know a
lot more than I do about what I'm talking about, but I don't like these
doomsday scenarios which really are unnecessary if people stop being so
anal about sharing information.
Nicholas Vinen
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