Re: Automatic download and installation of drivers.

[Tim Jansen <tim@tjansen.de>]

On Tuesday 16 October 2001 18:52, Greg KH wrote:
> The current linux-hotplug interface solves this problem.  The driver
> itself lets the kernel/world know for what devices it supports.  Coming
> from the other direction (what driver supports this device) is just as
> easy.  Look at modules.usbmap and modules.pcimap for examples.

But how does this help for drivers that are not installed yet because they 
are not part of the kernel? This is the reason for downloading drivers.


> By putting the driver into the tree, all the problems go away, users
> don't have to compile their own drivers, the drivers are all distributed
> by the different Linux vendors, vendors don't have to update their
> driver for every kernel api change, and everyone is happy.  

I doubt that this will make hardware vendors happy:
- their devices cannot be supported before they are included in a kernel. 
Assuming a world where new devices are released with vendor-supported linux 
drivers this would mean that a new device cannot be released before their 
drivers are in the kernel and distributions picked this kernel up. 
- vendors lose control of their device drivers even though their quality is 
crucial for the success of their products

This is also a problem for users. Most distributions do update between 1 and 
4 times updates per year. This means that users have to wait for their driver 
up to one year before they can buy new devices or get an update for their 
driver. 

bye...





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