Should Linux Have a Binary Kernel Driver Layer?

zerojoker writes "The discussion is not new but was heated up by a blog entry from Greg Kroah-Hartman: Three OSDL Japan members, namely Fujitsu, NEC and Hitachi are pushing for a stable Kernel driver layer/API, so that driver developers wouldn't need to put their drivers into the main kernel tree. GKH has several points against such an idea." What do you think?

Comments

No Thanks!

[Shads]

No thanks, this is just a great way to promote closed source inside the linux kernel and to make debugging problems totally impossible.

Solves the reason why I gave up Linux

[s20451]

I gave up Linux mostly because I was tired of getting punished for having new hardware, which is often unsupported. Especially on laptops.

If you don't force the manufacturers to include their driver source in the kernel, you might get them to release actual drivers for their new hardware.

Re:Excellent suggestion!

[IAmTheDave]

Having a kernel API for drivers allows developers to stay away from the mainstream kernel. This will enhance the stability of the kernel in general and also allow hardware vendors to support Linux with less effort.

I am not a linux contributor, but I would think you'd kinda want to guard access to the kernel kinda closely. I mean, sure, anyone can fork it or grab a copy to putz around with, but contributing back into the kernel - that's gotta be just about as stable as a piece of code can be.

Despite some loss in efficiency, I've always been an advocate of abstracted access. To many of the pieces of software we write at my job do we add a logical API, so that we don't always have to open the main code branch every time we want to add a feature.

Driver developers hardly equal kernel developers. Keeping the two logically seperated makes sense - not to mention that driver developers are hardly the only ones that would benefit from this API.