On Mon, 2004-06-14 at 11:37, Arjan van de Ven wrote: > On Mon, 2004-06-14 at 20:22, Florin Andrei wrote: > > Of all operating systems i've dealt with so far, Linux seems to > > consistently choose the worst methods for installing new drivers, > > updating them, etc. Even Windows for Workgroups was better in this > > regard. > > linux has a different driver model. Drivers are part of the kernel. Full > members, including being part of the kernel source code. This has > advantages for the programmers as well as for the users, for the former > it is easier to do changes and see users of interfaces etc, for the > later it means that 99.999% of the time the right drivers are just there > instead of having to search half the intranet for drivers. > > The model also has the downside that non-bundled drivers are a bit of an > ignored stepchild.... Non-bundled drivers (ie: drivers that are not included in the kernel source) are not a problem, as far as I can tell. It is possible to package them. The problem I was pointing out is with upgrading drivers that are already part of the kernel (and keeping everything properly packaged and consistent, of course). I believe there was a mechanism for doing that in RH/FC with the older modutils and 2.4.x (the "updates" directory), there is none available for 2.6.x (AFAIK). -- Fernando
