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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?
While I appreciate your work, if my hardware drivers worked as well as wine (i.e. rarely 100% correct), I'd probably stop using linux.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I didn't realize that they were being silly about things such as indentation and formatting. No wonder nobody wants to write open source drivers for Linux.. I may rethink embarking on future driver projects. I have a real problem dealing with elitist jerks.
Linux is open source.. seems like there could be a fork that updates with the main kernel but either (1) also allows binary drivers or (2) aren't jerks about trivialities. It doesn't matter what the people in "charge" of Linux think, since it's supposed to be free software. I think the people we care about are those that are in charge of the distros.. Redhat, Ubuntu, etc. They are going to want to maximize the hardware their distro runs on, so I believe they'd go with the fork.
Also, I'm curious about efforts to use Windows XP drivers in Linux. Is this effort being slowed by lack of kernel support?