Re: Driver model.. expel legacy drivers?

[Alistair John Strachan <s0348365@sms.ed.ac.uk>]

On Sunday 15 October 2006 02:24, Kevin K wrote:
> On Oct 14, 2006, at 6:51 PM, John Richard Moser wrote:
> >> Microsoft are also being very helpful. They are making it harder and
> >> harder for people to use drivers not microsoft-signed which in turns
> >> pushes up costs for development and as a result encourages more
> >> standardization of driver interfaces to take place.
> >
> > huh?
>
> My assumption is that vendors may make fewer gratuitious interface
> changes so the hardware is more likely to work with existing, signed,
> drivers.  If changes aren't made, existing Linux drivers are more
> likely to work with new revisions of hardware.
>
> My experience in the past for hardware, such as USB based flash
> memory readers, is that when they came out you seemed to always need
> a proprietary driver, and Linux drivers needed hints for different
> readers.  It seems better these days, with things like USB keys
> generally working in both Windows and relatively modern distributions
> without much effort.

Alan's talking about standards like AHCI, {U,O,E}HCI, AC'97, all standards for 
silicon that make writing generic drivers possible.

I'm patiently waiting for an equivalent for wireless, or graphics (hopefully 
not another VESA)..

-- 
Cheers,
Alistair.

Final year Computer Science undergraduate.
1F2 55 South Clerk Street, Edinburgh, UK.