On Mon, 2003-05-19 at 16:37, Hong Hsu wrote: > I got confused when people use kernel module and driver interchangeably. For an example, from nvidia.com you can download Linux Display Driver NVIDIA_lernel-1.0-2960.rh73up.rpm. After compilation, the NVdriver will be copied to /lib/modules/2.4.18-3/kernel/drivers/video/ directory. I also notice there is nvidia_drv.o in /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/ directory. > > How and when term kernel module should be used? Is it synonym of device driver? Should each device driver has a corresponding kernel module under /lib/modules/? > The short answer is that a driver is a driver and a module is a module. A driver could be built as a module. A module is just a chink of kernel code that can be loaded (and usually unloaded) at runtime. A driver is usually a chunk of code that controls a physical device such as a disk driver. -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
