Hardware driver bias [LWN.net]

Hardware driver bias

Posted Apr 18, 2008 9:43 UTC (Fri) by ncm (subscriber, #165)
In reply to: OMFS and the value of obscure filesystems by pj
Parent article: OMFS and the value of obscure filesystems

I don't see the difference between a file system driver for obscure hardware and a chip driver
for obscure hardware.   They've been hyping how easy it is to get a well-enough-written chip
driver into the kernel.  Resistance here appears to sully that message.  

That said, there seems to be a lot of effort to divert USB hardware drivers to user-space
libraries, which is probably all to the good. I suppose the difference is that FUSE is not the
standard installation that USB libraries and the generic drivers they depend upon are.  Fixing
that is a job for the distributions.

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USB drivers to userspace

Posted Aug 3, 2008 10:20 UTC (Sun) by smurf (subscriber, #17840) [Link]

That move does exist, but only for devices with no concurrent uses and no established kernel
interface -- scanners, for example.

It's not limited to USB either; the Firewire DV driver was likewise deprecated.