> Date: Mon, 27 Sep 1999 15:48:11 +0100 (BST)
> From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
>
> > User buys Banavision capture card. Oops! Not supported in 2.2. User
> > has to wait for the 2.4 kernel to come out (months and months
> > away).... or use a development kernel. Whoops! 2.3 kernel has
>
> Come off it Ted, you know perfectly well we back port drivers as they become
> stable - aggressively so.
>
> Yes, but (1) it takes time before they show up in the 2.2 releases, and
> (2) does this really scale? Consider how many speciality devices are
> out there --- from business card scanners to TV digitizing boards, etc.
> Can you really keep up with all of the new devices? Remember, today
> people can purchase these devices and they come with device driver disks
> for Windows. Are we saying that there's something Windows can do that
> we can't? That's embarassing.
Is it really? We sure as hell can do a lot that Windows can do, and quite
a few of these things (like stability, speed etc.) is because we don't tie
down ourselves with binary compability.
> OK, so we don't want to lock down interfaces forever. I can accept
> that. But do we really need to allow interfaces to arbitrarily change
> during a stable kernel series? (Most of the times when we've need to
> make such major changes to the stable kernel series, particularly during
> the 2.0 series, stability has suffered.) I'd claim that it really isn't
> that difficult to lock down internal interfaces during a stable kernel
> release, and allow manufacturers to release device drivers that work
> against 2.2 kernels. If they need to rewrite their drivers for the 2.4
> kernels, fine.
>
> I don't believe that it would be that hard for us to be able to match MS
> on this front, and it would make a big differences both for users and
> for peripherals manufacturers to be willing to support Linux.
Well, for one thing, we'd have to drop all UP-kernels and run all kernels
SMP, to avoid the problem of having separate modules for SMP & UP.
/David Weinehall
_ _
// David Weinehall <tao@acc.umu.se> /> Northern lights wander \\
// Project MCA Linux hacker // Dance across the winter sky //
\> http://www.acc.umu.se/~tao/ </ Full colour fire </
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