Re: Linux 2.6.9-ac3

Bill Davidsen
2004-10-23T14:43:14Z

Luca Risolia wrote:
>>o Restore PWC driver (Luc Saillard)
>
>
> This driver does decompression in kernel space, which is not
> allowed. That part has to be removed from the driver before
> asking for the inclusion in the mainline kernel.

What do you mean by "not allowed?" Clearly it would nice if it were in
user space, but it would have to be in EVERY user application to be
useful. We have compression in kernel for ppp, and there's only one
significant use for that, requiring that every application support every
vendor hardware makes it a non-scalable NxM problem.

The ideal solution would be to convert vendor format to neutral format
ala netpbm, and then let the applications handle that format (or a small
set of formats). It sounds as if this driver is essentially doing that.

This is not hardware which virtually every system includes, so size is
not a big issue here. I think that CPU hogging is a valid concern,
perhaps that would be a good thing to address rather than taking the
"wait a few years for support" approach.

--
bill davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>
CTO TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979