From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Tim Jansen Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 18:44:04 +0000 Subject: Re: Automatic download and installation of drivers. Message-Id: List-Id: References: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org 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... _______________________________________________ Linux-hotplug-devel mailing list http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net Linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-hotplug-devel