LinuxCon: x86 platform drivers

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