Re: Stop the Linux kernel madness
From: 4Front Technologies
Date: Sun Jun 20 2004 - 20:17:38 EST
David Lang wrote:
or they need to go through the process of getting their driver included
in the main kernel and these headaches go away.
How would you handle the following modules that aren't drivers - like filesystems:
- ClusterFS
- Intermezzo
- Sistina
There are loads of other very specific drivers for embedded systems that
have no real applicability in the mainstream kernel like DSP boards, specialized
encryption board drivers, military grade video capture/display devices. There
are other things like PCI-Express "development" drivers that aren't stable and
developers need a way to build them outside the kernel.
Infact it's good programming practices to ensure that drivers/modules build
independant of the kernel. There are too many companies like Win4Lin/VMWare that
only offer support for Redhat or SuSE kernels with debian, gentoo and other's
left out of the action.
You and others can keep suggesting that put the world+kitchen sink into the
kernel and have the problems go away but it's not realistic. Many drivers are
still maintained outside the kernel and you aren't providing a solution.
Right now the kernel configuration has become complex enough that someone ought
to write a cool program that probes the customer's hardware + OS system and be
able to build an optimized kernel + drivers + modules with minimal user
intervention. Make it a commercial app and mint money because there's such a
dire need. Most Linux users aren't able to do this and this basically means you
have little ability to test all kinds of kernel configuration combinations.
it's less likly that the people running the 6.x distros are going to be
installing the latest and greatest hardware that needs the new
out-of-kernel driver, but if you think you need to create modules that
will work with every kernel since 2.0 have fun.
How about just dealing with Linux 2.6.0 to Linux 2.6.7?. It's become bad enough
that you need stuff like ifdef REGPARM, ifdef NOREGPARM, ifdef GCC 3.2, ifdef
GCC 3.4, ifdef SMP, and other ifdefs if you're doing a bunch of /proc types of
sysadmin stuff
>
David Lang
best regards
Dev Mazumdar
-----------------------------------------------------------
4Front Technologies
4035 Lafayette Place, Unit F, Culver City, CA 90232, USA.
Tel: (310) 202 8530 URL: www.opensound.com
Fax: (310) 202 0496 Email: info@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
-----------------------------------------------------------
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/