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