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Stable kernel 2.6.1 released

Stable kernel 2.6.1 released

Posted Jan 9, 2004 19:54 UTC (Fri) by xorbe (subscriber, #3165)
In reply to: Stable kernel 2.6.1 released by mmarq
Parent article: Stable kernel 2.6.1 released

with what, wads of cash and incentives?


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Stable kernel 2.6.1 released

Posted Jan 9, 2004 20:42 UTC (Fri) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]

If you want a driver written for newer hardware, do it the way most things in open source get done. (And no, don't write it yourself!) When you buy your hardware, buy an extra and send it (anonymously) to a poor starving computer science undergrad who can't afford anything. Then lurk on the linux kernel mailing list. Within a couple of months at most (best to time your hardware purchases so as not to conflict with finals) you should see a patch submission with an explanation to the effect that 'I had this cool new video card that I wanted to use but it didn't have linux drivers so I reverse engineered the protocol and wrote this but I'm not using my real name because NV*a would probably have me arrested.'

One more tip from personal experience. I doesn't hurt to follow up the anonymous hardware shipment with an occasional anonymous pizza shipment. It's frustrating when they keel over in the middle of the project. You have to start all over again, and it's hard to even get your hardware back.

Stable kernel 2.6.1 released

Posted Jan 10, 2004 22:30 UTC (Sat) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

So,... its a good or stupid idea to have a split driver model ?

I mean, if you think of it, there is some part of the code that "always" could stay with that particular piece of hardware, unchanged or with minor tweaks unltil the end of useful live of it... while the kernel and above could change dramatically.

And a split driver model, with a some form of API/ABI that would cut tangencial to the hardware, i.e. would be hardened to not allow the "hardware half" code to expose much more than the BUS and those hardware registers...

This kind of protocol would:
a)facilitate debugging
b)facilitate reverse engeniring
C)facilitate portability to other OpenSource OSes (BSDs)
d)faciliate maintenance

I belive ALSA is "half" the way there, with the only big lacking of hardening.

IMO this could prove to be the deal that the hardware industry could not refuse.

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