> That is, the user/kernel interface for device binding should, at some
> level, be by name, not by number. It's too easy to get numbers
> wrong. We have DNS for the analogous problem with the network. For
> devices, it needs to be a kernel-level function, since only the kernel
> knows what devices actually exist, and the source for each driver is
> the only safe place to keep the names of the devices it supports.]
Addresses on the net are used everyday by sysadmins and user alike.
Major/minor numbers are used by sysadmins only (I'd say that most Linux
users are sysadmins to some degree) and not frequently.
ldd