LCA: Updates on the X Window System [LWN.net]

LCA: Updates on the X Window System

Posted Jan 23, 2007 0:41 UTC (Tue) by scottt (subscriber, #5028)
Parent article: LCA: Updates on the X Window System

> Keith now thinks that the Linux kernel developers got it right by keeping drivers inside the kernel.

Sun microsystems would probably not like this change.

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LCA: Updates on the X Window System

Posted Jan 23, 2007 6:54 UTC (Tue) by Thalience (subscriber, #4217) [Link] (1 responses)

I believe that refers to managing/releasing the core server and graphics drivers as one source tree, as is done with Linux; not to the separate idea of using an OpenGL-based DDX and pushing all hardware access to the kernel.

Keeping the drivers in the same tree with the rest of the kernel helps to keep the drivers from growing their own private implementations of various utility code.

LCA: Updates on the X Window System

Posted Jan 23, 2007 7:56 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

It also means -- and this is a biggie -- that you don't need to maintain forward/backward compatibility (no ABIs or APIs to maintain). If there's a change you want to make, you just MAKE it. Add RCU? No problem. It's wonderful.

This is why there's so little cruft in the Linux source tree (or, more accurately, the little cruft that's there is baked in so hard that it takes major surgery to get it out). This is quite unlike the Windows DDK which has grown into a massive hairy monster as Microsoft was forced to ensure that old drivers and new drivers alike could call into the same API.

I really hope the X devs choose to use the kernel model. Otherwise they're likely to get bogged down in API management and development will be slower than it should be.