Linux Kernel To Have Stable Userspace Drive

liquidat writes "Linus Torvalds has included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. The last patch to Linus' tree included the new API elements. The idea is to make life easier for driver developers: 'This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses.'"

Comments

I thought I read Uberspace

[TheRistoman]

So I immediately thought of a spaceship running Linux... I mean, could it really be otherwise?

Re:Better drivers and more of them

[chromatic]

Costs are one of the issues besides the difficulty in porting windows drivers to linux which many makers do not bother doing.

If only there were some magical pool of experienced labor just waiting to write and maintain, in perpetuity, Linux drivers for any manufacturer of any hardware....

Re:Full circle?

[Tumbleweed]

Microkernels are the wave of the future.

And always will be. :)

microkernel

[jb.cancer]

well i remember Linus comparing microkernels to 'masturbating' sometime back. It seems as h/w continues to grow in power and several other factors contributing, pushing more stuff to userspace will now look a better idea after all.

Re:Tail Light Chasing!

[Ripsnorter]

No you don't get how things work around here, when Microsoft does something it is bad. When Linus does something similar it is good.