From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Tim Jansen Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2001 18:58:59 +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 09:35, you wrote: > that model of software distribution.) The current Linux model is that > driver distribution is tightly coupled to the associated kernel. That is > known to work well. What's the motivation for another model? One motivation is to lower the barrier for hardware vendors who want to provide drivers. So far it is very difficult for them. Either they provide a dozen of RPM packages and still can not reach all Linux users (like nvidia) or they don't even try and support one or two distributions (AVM supports only SuSE on their ISDN adapter). The linux market is small enough, and by making it difficult to provide a single driver to all users you make is even less worthwhile. The advantage for users is that they can get drivers for new devices or updates without waiting for a new release of their distribution. It will also help users of, for example, debian and slackware who wouldn't get pre-packaged drivers otherwise, at least not before the driver is in the kernel. And those who would like to update their distribution, but the driver vendor hasn't released a newer package yet (SuSe 7.3 is out, but AVM only supports 7.1 and 7.2). 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