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LinuxCon: x86 platform driversLinuxCon: x86 platform driversPosted Aug 24, 2011 18:54 UTC (Wed) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)Parent article: LinuxCon: x86 platform drivers
Wow.
A question to Matthew Garrett, how do you manage to keep your sanity?
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LinuxCon: x86 platform drivers Posted Aug 24, 2011 19:16 UTC (Wed) by Tester (subscriber, #40675) [Link]
You assume he was ever sane...
LinuxCon: x86 platform drivers Posted Aug 24, 2011 23:44 UTC (Wed) by PaulWay (✭ supporter ✭, #45600) [Link]
I don't know, but I suspect it's a lot easier for him to keep his sanity than it is for driver writers for Windows.
With Linux you have a developer community that prefers well-written, comprehensive solutions to badly thought out, slapdash ones. If it isn't working or is obviously a bad thing, it doesn't get included. We have an open, accountable process to show those decisions and improve things. If something needs to be fixed or improved in the kernel to make it easier for a class of drivers to work, then it usually is.
With proprietary driver writers, everything is opaque. You can't change anything outside your own little cubicle. Decisions about how you write your code and when it's ready are arbitrary and driven mostly by time to market rather than quality. Every once in a while Microsoft throws the old system in the trash, declares that .Net 17.5 is going to be the new way of doing things, it's half incompatible with what you've just written, and you have absolutely no say in this. No wonder they spend all that time writing their own wifi handler software and come up with bulky, kludgy drivers.
I'd be keeping him away from any hardware manufacturers and all sharp objects for the foreseeable future, though :-)
Have fun,
Paul
LinuxCon: x86 platform drivers Posted Aug 25, 2011 2:49 UTC (Thu) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]
Well, actually kernel-level API in Windows is incredibly stable. It's possible to compile NT4-era drivers for Windows 7 with only minor modifications.
And writing an input device driver is not hard - no community to slap your wrist if you try dirty hacks, no worry about code maintainability. Any half-trained code monkey can do it. And unfortunately many do, as witnessed by various crapware platform drivers.
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