On Wed, 2007-12-26 at 12:06 -0500, Bit wrote:
> What is so fundamentally different about drivers in Linux and Windows?
>
> <snip>
> Not knowing a great deal about how drivers really work in Linux or
> Windows, I can only really conclude that either Microsoft never updates
> the Windows kernel (at least not in a way that screws with driver
> interfaces), or there is something very different about how the two
> operating systems handle drivers. Can anyone shed some light on the
> subject for me?
>
> Thanks,
> bit
> <snip sig stuff>
It really comes down to the difference between the "business models".
Windows: closed, propietary, major market share; *IX (a lot of them)
open, non-propietary, lesser market share.
The developers of the hardware almost always provide drivers for W*dows.
They know their hardware intimately, they have full-blown develpment
teams and systems with access to necessary source in W*dows, etc.
For *IX, only some hardware developers provide drivers. The rest are
developed by community members. These are often based on only specs from
the hardware developers and often no specs at all. Specs may be
erroneous, incomplete and/or late. No in-house development systems or
teams.
W*dows drivers available upon release of the hardware, *IX often
necessarily have to come late due to the items mentioned above.
You can avoid a lot of this by just running all your video adapters in
VGA mode, which is relatively static and supported with very little
change needed as new kernels and hardware become available.
--
Bill
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