Re: Question about dynamic minor number of misc device

From: Sam Hartman
Date: Tue Jan 21 2020 - 13:01:51 EST


>>>>> "Theodore" == Theodore Y Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx> writes:

Theodore> Sam,

Theodore> Would you happen to know how commonly used the speakup system would be
Theodore> --- in particular, on non-udev systems where changing the minor number
Theodore> of the device node might break some folks? Does your hardware system
Theodore> use speakup, or some other interface?

Speakup is used by things like the Debian Installer in speech mode.
I'd assume D-I uses udev.

However Speakup is also likely to be used by blind people who prefer
older environments--no GUI, no pulseaudio, that sort of thing.
No udev is kind of pushing that mindset to the extreme though.
Speakup is not typically used without a keyboard or similar, so you're
not going to see it on embedded systems.





Theodore> Also, who would be the best people to reach out at the
Theodore> linux-speakup.org project to verify what the potential impact might be
Theodore> of making this change. It looks like some of the web pages are a bit
Theodore> dated, so I wasn't sure what's up to date.

I might ask on debian-accessibility@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
My recollection is that the upstream is not very energetic, and that the
distros keep speakup working because it's quite important for some
people.
We broke it on hda_intel for the original Buster release and that
certainly generated lots of user feedback.

debian-accessibility is Debian specific. There is the more general
blinux-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (blind linux users), but that lists tends to
be so user focused that you might not get good feedback to a question
like this.

--Sam