From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: John Belmonte Subject: Re: experimental patch for toshiba_acpi Date: Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:12:11 -0500 Message-ID: References: <20090225152409.GA4015@srcf.ucam.org> <1235578705.4770.57.camel@penguin.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk> <20090225165152.GA5981@srcf.ucam.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from qw-out-2122.google.com ([74.125.92.25]:57234 "EHLO qw-out-2122.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752658AbZBZNMO (ORCPT ); Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:12:14 -0500 Received: by qw-out-2122.google.com with SMTP id 5so955328qwi.37 for ; Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:12:11 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: <20090225165152.GA5981@srcf.ucam.org> Sender: linux-acpi-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org To: Matthew Garrett Cc: Jonathan Buzzard , Charles@schwieters.org, linux-acpi@vger.kernel.org, Richard Hughes On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Matthew Garrett wrote: > On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 04:18:25PM +0000, Jonathan Buzzard wrote: > >> Because it makes far more sense to have a user mode program to drive the >> features, and for the kernel to provide the necessary thin layer to >> access the features. > > It makes sense for the kernel to provide a consistent abstraction of > hardware functionality where possible. Almost every kernel driver could > be rewritten in userspace - that doesn't make it a good idea. That argument would be most applicable if we were talking about adding some new /dev interface-- but we're not. Toshiba's HCI has been around for a couple of decades; /dev/toshiba, which exposes it, has been around for over 10 years; toshset, a useful and popular tool which depends on /dev/toshiba, nearly as long as /dev/toshiba. The proposed patch makes /dev/toshiba, and hence toshset, work on more laptops-- it's a no-brainer to anyone with a practical mindset. You've got Jonathan and Charles-- the two most-knowledgeable people on Toshiba's firmware and /dev/toshiba in the free software community-- saying that it's not practical to jam all that functionality into the kernel. Please listen to them. Regards, --John