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Novell Delivers Device Driver Breakthrough
An anonymous reader writes "Novell today announced a new Linux device driver process to make it easier for third party device driver writers to integrate their drivers with SUSE Linux." From the article: "The new driver process allows customers to obtain drivers independently of Novell® kernel updates and supplies a straightforward approach third parties can use when developing device drivers for Novell's SUSE® Linux Enterprise products. The new Linux driver process developed by Novell allows hardware and software vendors to provide Linux drivers and driver updates for their products to customers directly and transparently, in a way that is completely integrated with SUSE Linux Enterprise delivery and support."
Ah, never mind. This looks basically like an "apt-get upgrade" for drivers, rather than some new ABI.
http://outcampaign.org/
This is only going to work if you're using SuSE. And if you don't compile your own kernel. It only gives vendors an excuse to call their shitty binary-only drivers "Linux support". I'd call this thing a Linux driver setback.
Buy hardware that is supported. Yes it's a pain to do the research, but it's worth it. I have a Shuttle XPC and wanted to install their wireless add-on that doesn't require a PCI slot. I worried about drivers until I found that it uses the ZD1211 chip for which ZyDas provides an open source Linux driver. Then I learned that there is a sourceforge project to rewrite the driver so it's suitable for integration into the mainline kernels - 64bit included. They plan to get into 2.6.17 or 18 kernels, so wireless may well work out of the box when I upgrade to Fedora 6 in the fall. For now it's possible to make it work the hard way (download/compile) without ndiswrapper.
There are other cards with this chip and there are other chips with native Linux drivers in various states. The future looks good.
Ok, I like Linux. In fact, I'd love to write software for it since, as a developer who leverages open source libraries, I feel like Microsoft has told me I'm no longer welcome.
... what there is is not abstract enough to be graced with that name. Module maybe fits. C'mon you geeks, seriously, what's the holdup here? What is the big problem with having a driver binary that just works across all minor revisions of a major version of a Linux kernel? That would be a HUGE plus for me.
So when I saw CentOS, I figured it was time to make the switch. It offered everything I needed. I went to fry's and bought the hardware for my new app server which included a cheapy HighPoint 1640 RAID card so I could setup a RAID 1 system. It said it supported Linux, so I figured I was good.
Well I wasn't good. There was source code for an open source driver from HighPoint. But trying to figure out how to package and build the thing was amazingly arcane and retarded! I HAD to install a floppy disk for godssakes. The experience of trying to bootstrap and get the damned open source drivers built for the thing was a long trip through the fiery pits. Equally evil was trying to figure out how to patch a new kernel with recompiled drivers whenever yum got me a new one. What a pain!
I'm a developer not a sysadmin. The fact that I figured out how to make my RAID card work with Linux was not a satisfying experience to me, it was frustrating and it was a waste of tens of hours over many months. You geeks who like to build kernels and fiddle with make files have at it. It's just not my thing.
In fact, I think there is no such thing as Linux device drivers
Whatever the case, the other poster who said it's not 1992 anymore had it right - we need some more slickness around drivers if we are going to win. And since I'm planning on not upgrading to the next version of windows, I would prefer we start winning on the desktop real quick.
Dave