Re: NAK new drivers without proper power management?

[Robert Hancock <hancockr@shaw.ca>]

Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> If your device requires power management, and you know it requires power
> management, why not just implement power management? Doing -ENOSYS
> instead is like saying -ESPAMMEBECAUSEIMLAZY.
> 
> Let me put it another way: People keep talking about Linux being ready
> for the desktop. To me at least (but I dare say for lots of other people
> too), being ready for the desktop means that things just work, without
> having to recompile kernels or bug driver authors or wait twelve
> months. 
> 
> And it means that doing a bare minimum isn't enough. We keep claiming
> that Open Source is better than Proprietary software. If we accept
> half-pie jobs of implementing support for anything - driver power
> management support or hibernation support or whatever - as 'good
> enough', we're undercutting that argument. Linux's power management
> support should - as far as we're able - be at least as good as that
> other operating system's and preferably way, way better.
> 
> -ENOSYS is just not acceptable.

Well, it's probably more acceptable than silently doing nothing and the 
device failing or locking up the machine on resume, but I couldn't agree 
more that it's not what we want to be encouraging. Perfect may be the 
enemy of the good, but "works except no power management" is hardly what 
I would call good these days, more like pretty sloppy..

-- 
Robert Hancock      Saskatoon, SK, Canada
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