Re: Video drivers and the kernel

[Timur Tabi <ttabi@interactivesi.com>]

** Reply to message from "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> on Wed, 14
Feb 2001 01:09:10 -0500 (EST)


> Both options cause political troubles. Currently the X server is
> shared with OS/2 and other crummy systems. If the Linux kernel had
> serious video drivers for PC hardware, then driver support for the
> other operating systems would mostly go away. Linux would become
> a better desktop OS, at the expense of various crummy systems.

First of all, I'm object to calling OS/2 a "crummy system".  There are still
some things that OS/2 can do better than Linux.  But I don't want to get into a
flame war.  

More importantly, just because the drivers move into the kernel doesn't mean
that other OS's can't be supported.  A video driver could be compiled for the
kernel on Linux, but be compiled as something else for other OS's.  In fact, on
OS/2, a special driver is provided with XFree86 that effectively allows the X
Server to run with the same capabilities as an OS/2 device driver.  In fact, by
strict standards, it's a security and reliability loophole, but it still works
pretty well.

So I wouldn't worry about OS/2.  If we can port your audio drivers, we can port
anything.

xBSD, on the other hand, ....


-- 
Timur Tabi - ttabi@interactivesi.com
Interactive Silicon - http://www.interactivesi.com

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