Tech firms to tackle Linux desktop standards

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This is a very much needed feature...

The driver API in Linux should at least be patch level version agnostic, remaining to be release specific. What I mean, is that there should be a way to have a stock of symbols in the kernel with each relese (2.6, 2.8, 2.10, 3.0, etc) which act like bindings for device drivers. Having these a manufacturer could start to support Linux at say version 2.8.3, and as Linux evolves towards 2.10 when 2.8.20 gets released, the same driver for 2.8.3 will still work, because the underlying bindings of the API have not changed. So long as these standard symbols are preserved (and here we can start to argue about compiler versions and the like), hardware manufacturers should be able to start releasing binary-only drivers (having also a way to identify them, like the "taint" mark).

In the best Open Source interest, ideally, these manufacturers should release their hardware specs so we could have Free drivers (as in Freedom), easily portable form one platform to another. However having a static set of symbols in the kernel will also help to lower compilation times for the kernel when a kernel re-compile is needed (or build a new one), because the new kernel will be able to use your already installed drivers.

There's a rudimentary feature in the kernel that does this (module versioning), but it depends on the module itself to contain enough information, what about splitting the responsiblity required on a kernel-side part and a module-part side? That's just an idea, though... I'm no OS architecture expret, nor a seasoned programmer, I'm just saying that in order to have broader hardware support, Linux should start allowing companies to support their own devices in a more friendly way (not requiring them to have a driver for each kernel version that there is).

Posted by: thetargos   Posted on: 11/08/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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