Why a split model makes sense

Why a split model makes sense

Posted Sep 24, 2004 22:23 UTC (Fri) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Why a split model makes sense by mmarq
Parent article: A Sun engineer on Linux

True. But worst than kludges is no support at all...

Not true. It's much better to know that this or that piece of hardware is "no-go" then to buy RAID-controller with Penguin on sticker and only crappy driver for Linux 2.4.10 or somwathing.

and you can always harden the kernel, like in patches that circulated before 2.6.0, i belive, and that were supposed to kick out from running any kernel module that breaks...

And if module does not work and is kicked from kernel this helps me exactly how ? I still can not use the thing. If you can use driver for USB-IrDA dongle and it works just fine till you'll try to use it to connect to some device via IrDA (real-life example from W2K=>WXP transition) - how it's usefull for you ?

and join to that the possibility of load the tiny 'split' extension portion, in RING 0 or RING 1 of the processor, far way from userland where Windows drivers get massacreded by all sort of "your computer is mine" software and other malware.

Windows drivers were in userspace long-long ago. With NT they always were protected from userspace. It does not help with subtle API changes at all. I see how "good" it works for Windows and Solaris. Not very good at all: drivers from third-party providers are often break after major upgrade despite "commitment to binary compatibility". Sometimes installation of some Service Pack is enough.

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