generic ACPI video and hotkey drivers vs. platform-specific drivers

Len Brown
2005-03-03T21:08:45Z

It is great that programmers -- sometimes with little or no
vendor support -- have come up with platform specific
drivers to make things work on their boxes. But
this is only a stepping stone to where we need to be,
for building special drivers for every platform is not
a solution of first choice, it is a solution of last resort.

The total number of systems already deployed and those
in the pipeline is very large when you account for all
the models from all the vendors -- and this number is
increasing, not decreasing. If we lead the distros
down this path they will get crushed in a support mess.

As I've said before, it is fine with me for exotic drivers
to handle exotic hardware -- nobody wants to muck-up generic
code for a few exotics. But we need a design where
standard systems we've never heard of "just work";
and we need to make the use, administration, and support
of exotic systems as much like standard sytems
as possible.

I believe that Bruno's generic video driver (in tree)
is a step in this direction. I believe that Luming's
generic hot key driver (on list, but not yet in tree)
is a step in this direction. Are either of these
"final"? heck no, but I'm confident that they're
heading us in the right direction.

I plan to pull Luming's hot-key driver into the ACPI patch
soon -- the only reason we didnt' do it earlyer is because
the previous version would have immediately broken the
existing platform specific drivers...

We also need to think about the kernel<->user interface
we've currently got.

We need to think through the suggestion that hot keys
should appear to Linux like other keyboard keys -- and
wind their way throught the input layer. I think the important
thing will be what the user or administrator has to do in
order to map which keys to which functions; and if this
can work automatically without a call to 1-800-distro.
Hopefully we can leverage the stuff people use for keyboard
special keys already.

thanks for your support,
-Len