Slashdot Log In
Simplifying Linux Driver Installation
Posted by
timothy
on Sun Sep 12, 2004 05:28 PM
from the please-and-how dept.
from the please-and-how dept.
prostoalex writes "O'Reilly Network posts an update on Project Utopia that produced Hardware Abstraction Layer for Linux simplifying device changes. They also link to the Driver on Demand project on SourceForge, whose goal is to create a central database to enable Linux desktops download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in her new hardware device."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
Tough to stay with XP (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Tough to stay with XP (Score:4, Interesting)
But when Windows DOESN'T have the driver, good luck. Windows has (and has had for quite a while) the ability to search for the driver on the internet (it's a choice in the add hardware/change driver dialog), but I've NEVER seen it actually find a driver off the internet. I think it would be FANTASTIC if a user could buy hardware, stick it in the machine, and have that happen. If the kernel has the driver, it works. If it doesn't, it finds it on the internet and gives you the option to download and install it. No web searches, no checking obscure folders on driver CDs, nothing weird. Just plug it in and in a few seconds you're ready to go. That would be awesome.
Linux could have it, cool. Windows "has" it but I've never seen it work (has anyone else? Maybe it's just the hardware I use, maybe if I used server hardware like SCSI cards that would be in there). With Macs many things "Just work", but can OS X do anything like this?
A little thing like this will go a long way to make Linux seem more grown up and appealing to the average user (the concept of drivers confuses most computer newbies I help, so automating it would be a big help).
Parent
Re:Tough to stay with XP (Score:5, Insightful)
It would work with the off-brand ones if they only agreed any kind of rhyme or reason to the USB device name strings... and in FC3 it'll probably just work anyway thanks to some extra magic.
I hear the same complaint with video cards, USB MIDI, you name it. And I'm mystified. I bought a Radeon 9200SE for a home machine, turned it back on, FC2 auto-detected it and everything just worked. Where's the "complicated procedure" and the "hunting for clues on Usenet" ? I plugged the USB headphones from a nearby iMac in, and they appeared immediately as an output option in my Audio player app. No I didn't have to "configure" anything, or "mess around with the command line". When you plug a Playstation 2 keyboard into my USB capable FC2 laptop it just works, as you would expect.
So put the "Linux will never have working plug and play" complaints in the same category as "Linux will never be easy to install" complaints. Nothing is perfect, but as usual Linux (at least outside roll-your-own distros for the nerds) isn't any worse than any other system.
Parent
Re:Tough to stay with XP (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Probably no reverse engineering (Score:5, Interesting)
Question for the Kernel coders, what perctage of drivers are reverse engineered?? 60-70%
The percentage would be near 0% if not 0%. Plenty of hardware manufacturers have released open or open-enough programming specifications for their hardware. Intel [intel.com], AMD [amd.com] and National Semiconductor [national.com] are a few examples.
For example, here are the programming specifications for my network card, a Netgear FA312 - DP83815 10 100 Mb s Integrated PCI Ethernet Media Access Controller and Physical Layer (MacPhyter) [national.com]
Companies like NVidia and ATi are the exception, not the rule.
Parent
Okay... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Okay... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Okay... (Score:5, Informative)
The purpose of grammar is very similar to the purpose of spelling; a common standard allows for the quickest reading and comprehension possible. While your solution is certainly fine for colloquial speech, it has no place in print (epecially the original case, a semi-official form being posted on a website with readership in the millions). Ignoring the obvious jokes about slashdot and spelling/grammar, phrases that use a plural pronoun to refer to a singular antecedent are unnecessarily confusing for non-native speakers.
As for the citations, I would expect that a
Parent
A hardware abstraction layer? (Score:5, Insightful)
A scam! (Score:5, Funny)
Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Interesting)
For what it's worth, I'm somewhat sympathetic to Linus. Look at what HAL did for/to Windows. Crappy driver/HAL implementations were responsible for a lot of Windows perceived and real stability problems. Now Microsoft likes to certify drivers (WHQL), so they only take the blame for their own damn bugs.
Basically, it's a double-edged sword. Convenience vs. Stability. Personally, I think if Linus is serious about the desktop there needs to be some compomise. Me, I just dumped Linux on the desktop for my sweet new OS X system. Viva la UNIX!
Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
And we all see how well that's worked for many inkjet printers, essentially any graphics card, those Philips webcams that were recently mentioned on
Parent
Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:4, Insightful)
Something like this isn't the only thing holding linux back, but it would be a big help. I find it pretty frustrating that everytime you want to update the kernel, you have to recompile and setup all those non-builtin drivers to get things working again. At the very least, it would be nice if the kernel had at least some minimal guarantees that drivers compiled for one major revision of the kernel (i.e. the 2.4 series or 2.6 series) worked on all minor versions. At the moment, any time there's some little security bug requiring a kernel upgrade, you need to recompile your drivers or else force them to run for a version they weren't compiled for and risk something breaking.
Parent
Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Interesting)
- It requires changes in many drivers for every single kernel release, which takes valuable developer time.
- It makes drivers less stable and testable due to the constant changes they must undergo.
- It discourages driver development outside of the main kernel tree, which in turn...
- bloats the main kernel with too many drivers.
- Upgrading the kernel requires an upgrade and recompile of every driver you use, or you risk incompatibility or instability.
- It is nearly impossible to have a database holding every driver you might need for a desktop Linux system.
- Hardware detection and setup software requires constant changes to keep up with drivers and because of this is often unreliable.
I'm sure I could think of more disadvantages too, given enough time. Given the number and magnitude of these problems, it should be Linus's top priority to find a different way of encouraging open-source drivers, so that these problems can be solved. Changing the APIs willy-nilly can't be the only way to encourage open-source.If Linus won't listen to reason, I propose it's time for a kernel fork. Nothing less will solve Linux's driver situation, and it does need solving. Linus himself has already said that the 2.6 kernel isn't "stable" as such, and it's the responsibility of distributions to ensure that their kernels are stable. I propose that the distributions take Linus at his word and cooperate on forking the 2.6 kernel into a "stable" version with a focus on stable, user-friendly drivers and driver installation. Then Linus can remove a ton of irrelevant drivers out of the core kernel and focus on improving the guts for the next major release, while the rest of us enjoy better hardware support.
If Linus wants his tree to be a permanent development tree, so be it. The core kernel has now improved to the point where it is good enough for 99.9% of users, so further improvements in the development tree are becoming less and less relevant to Linux distribution users. Drivers are what users look forward to improvements in, not the kernel.
Closed-source drivers are still a concern, but I'm convinced that there are better ways to encourage manufacturers to open their source. Linus's way is not the only way.
Parent
Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
I seriously doubt that you'll find a group of kernel devs who will willingly inflict that situation on themselves. Remember that leak of Windows 2000 source? At least 15% percent of it turned out be kluges meant to prevent particular applications from breaking. We DON'T need to go there.
Parent
Wrong problem (Score:4, Interesting)
For the home user, things might well be different. But most people are running a distribution anyway, and would probably feel more comfortable getting drivers from them. That's how they get the security updates, so both the trust and the technical procedure is already in place. So if the distributors are to share the workload of getting these drivers, then a open project may be the right way -- but only for distributing the module source. Not many users would get drivers from here (Gentoo users come to mind).
The article has an ivory-tower stance to it and I think they solve the wrong problem. First we need to establish what the problem actually is. If the drivers are few and small then all drivers could be included in a typical distribution and updated with the rest of the system. Perhaps all that is needed is for distribution to update their kernel packages more often?
Higher level ABI possible (Score:3, Interesting)
Dunno, but as a computer developer I'm having serious trouble setting up my computer for linux. I've seen a few full crashes already, which are probably due to flaky drivers. Not all my devices have been picked up automatically either. Currently my HP deskjet printer is not working, even though it should be supported by the kernel, and is USB, so it should be plug and play.
The way v4l and scanners are working on linux are great examples, I would like to see higher levels and even user space processes dedicated for this kind of hardware. Let the disk IO, memory etc. be left to the kernel, but try to lift all non-critical drivers to a higher level. A common API for that would look to me as a great idea.
Enough with the Plug 'n Pray jokes (Score:4, Insightful)
Though I fear Linus' hardliner stance on ABI compatibility will hinder all this. Idealogical issues aside, from a user's standpoint a stable ABI for drivers is a significant plus for a desktop OS. I can only hope at some point the Linux kernel becomes stable enough for it to be considered.
Information (Score:3, Interesting)
How does a Computer know that when I plug in a USB mouse that the computer knows it is a mouse, and what drivers to use with it?
It would be interesting to incorporate the drivers onto the pice of hardware. I mean what if insead of including a CD [that these days are filled with crap] with the hardware, that they just put a small flash memory onto the item, and stored the drivers there. Then as new drivers were avalable, the OS would update the flash mem with new drivers as they were avalable. This may raise the cost of the item, but I would rather have a item that I can use anywhere on any machine without having to search for drivers, or cary a cd around with me.
Sure (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sure (Score:4, Insightful)
Just as with free speech, you can't force your ideas on others by restricting their abilities to express their own ideas. You have to trust that, given time, other people will recognize that your way is best and adopt it voluntarily. It's the same way with free software. Yes, a HAL will make the jobs of binary driver authors easier, just as it will for open soruce driver authors. And we'll certainly see more binary-only drivers as a result. But we have to trust that the wisdom of our model will become apparent to others and that, eventually, it will become the dominant model for software development (and distribution).
This is by far the hardest lesson to learn about freedom. It goes against instinct, and morality, to just sit back and watch people make mistakes. We want to help them, which means control them and their decisions, but in doing so we actually hurt them (and ourselves). It sucks, but we just need to have faith and demonstrate our principles through our deeds.
Parent
From the article ... (Score:4, Funny)
Good idea. (Score:4, Interesting)
Once I had the experience of trying to install Linux on my Dad's machine, and Linux was up and running, and all that was left is to get the computer online using the USB wireless dongle.
But when I googled around looking for drivers, apparently that dongle has 3 revisions, each with totally different drivers. Still, I wasn't discouraged and try then all in turn!
But somehow it doesn't work!
Then I found a thread in a forum somewhere which says I have to look at the stuff that is displayed during bootup, copy down something, and type a command. I did that, still doesn't work.
Then I did the same for each of the other 2 drivers in turn, ditto.
End up, defeated, I reinstalled Windoze on that machine. That so sucks man. Cos months later I got a phone call from my folks asking me how to get rid of those pr0n popups and stuff.
If only those drivers worked back then.
Currently it is really quite a challenge getting some bits of hardware to work right on linux. In fact, it is not currently, it has always been an issue. Once this is improved, I don't see why Linux won't fly.
2005 is the year of Linux on the desktop (and if John Titor is right, the end of US of A as we know it)
Linus' Attitude is detrimental (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't misunderstand me, as I have the up most respect for the guy, but after reading some of his comments about vendors approaching him about drivers, and his refusal to even discuss a HAL layer ( which IS the right way to, even if he doesnt want to deal with it ), I can see that the arrogance of the Linux community is starting to rub off. ( actually, if the article is correct, it may have actually reduced my respect for him as he's acting more like a child.. ).
Yes its his kernel and he can do with what he pleases, I understand this. But I also understand he would like it to continue to succeed, and being an ass wont advance that cause a bit. Look where it gets Theo..
I do expect to be modded down for this of course, but I see the 'attitude' as the #2 problem with Linux in general. ( #1 being the convoluted un-structured nature in general, which effects things in a detrimental way a lot more then many want to admit. ).
Until people get off their high horse and start acting professional instead of condescending, things here will have just about topped out, and the market share will be stagnant.
Seems like a solution at the wrong place (Score:4, Interesting)
Instead, I think there should be a (small set of) _device_ standards.
That is, something like a architecture standard: a standard category of devices which the manufacturers will agree to provide standard interfaces for
Combine that with a standard, architecture independent way of allowing devices to carry their own drivers. Perhaps something like a fast Forth like bytecode interpreter.
Maybe not the best approach, but a lot better than what we have now.
-- Pat
5 reasons to believe computers are female (Score:3, Funny)
Re:HER new hardware device? (Score:4, Interesting)
I never have any trouble finding a present for her. BeastlyBuy, CircusCity, and CompUGH are all on the way home from work and allow last minute shopping.
I in turn have the simple pleasure of working six and seven days a week at a nontechnical job. The General Manager once asked me about a problem with a monitor. I went to the tool cart, returned with a 10lb. sledgehammer, and asked where it was. I have never been asked a computer question since.
Parent
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Protected libraries (Score:5, Interesting)
You could, for example, have a graphics library that was setuid root, to allow non-root users to access the graphics hardware through a rectricted API.
This gives you the advantages of a shared library (no context switching, driver is distributed and managed separately from the kernel) without the disadvantages (processes must run as root because the library requires root privileges to access the hardware). There's only one disadvantage that I can think of: all arguments must be passed on the stack because the caller and the protected library have different data segments. If the protected library can be given access to the caller's data segment as well as its own, that problem disappears - the 386 supports six segments so that should be possible in principle. But passing arguments on the stack might be a better solution because it would allow arbitrary nesting of protected libraries.
Parent
Re:Yeah (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, all my hardware works.
Parent
Re:Yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
1. I plugged in the Lexar JumpDrive.
2. I went to My Computer, and was delighted to learn that the JumpDrive hadn't been detected.
3. Unplugged the Lexar JumpDrive.
4. Went into the Control Panel and Device Profiles, only to find that some sort of obscure-sounding USB device was misconfigured. Since they have a largely from-the-factory-setup Dell, I thought that had to be my hardware. Let Windows search for the drivers; it failed.
5. Plugged in the Lexar JumpDrive.
6. Unplugged the Lexar JumpDrive.
7. Plugged in the Lexar JumpDrive.
8. Restarted the XP machine, because my parents said they'd had the machine "acting squirly for a while."
9. Waited for restart, opened My Computer.
10. Unplugged the Lexar JumpDrive.
11. Went to the Lexar website looking for 3rd-party drivers. None available or needed.
12. Plugged in the Lexar JumpDrive.
13. Went to the Dell website. Waited for an eternity for the site to load.
14. Unplugged the Lexar JumpDrive to get a specific model number, and typed it into a Search box.
15. Plugged in the Lexar JumpDrive.
16. Raise an eyebrow since the device was autodetected and properly configured without human intervention.
Contrast this with my experience with a relatively user-unfriendly Linux install:
1. Plug in the Lexar JumpDrive.
2. Do some command-line magick to find that it's set up as
3. Edit
4. Set up a KDE device icon.
5. Click on the icon. Note: from now on, clicking on the icon mounts the device and opens a Konqueror window, while right-clicking gives me an unmount option.
Or, on Mac OS X:
1. Plug in the Lexar JumpDrive.
Parent
Re:Neat! (Score:5, Insightful)
Games? - The biggest games (and more games in general) are getting Linux ports.
Office suites/productivity? Done.
Plug 'n' play hardware and peripherals? Getting better, but the actual hardware manufacturers sure seem to be dragging their heels.
Low cost? Can't beat free.
Easy to configure? Again, getting better, but still a long way to go.
Easy to learn? Well, I haven't done any studies on this, but from various "switch" stories, it's at least as easy to learn (if not easier) than windows.
Security? Pretty dang good, but I'm not going to fool myself. If Linux were as widespread on the desktop as MS Windows, there would be a whole lot more exploits. Not necessarily more than on Windows, but more than there are now.
Parent
Re:Neat! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Neat! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Neat! (Score:5, Interesting)
But disk activity kills the machine. It's a laptop, so disk access is a little slow, but if I work with large files (open, close, save, copy, etc) especiallyi zip/rar files (lots of file operations) the system begins to slow to a crawl. Now I understand that the disk activity can slow the computer, but after all the transfers are complete, the computer is still slow. Opening IE goes from near instant (before all that) to seconds of the computer chugging. After that if I close IE and open it again, it still has to chug to open it (so it's not some simple cache thing). The computer is just slow as heck to respond to anything untill I reboot it. At that point it's fine! The same happens after defragging my disk if it's bad (and requires lots of operations to fix it).
I swear, it's like there is some internal limit in Windows when after a certain number of file operations, the system purposly slows down. Frankly I wouldn't be suprised if a little box popped up saying "You are doing too much heavy disk activity. Please buy Windows Server .Net 2003 for better performance" or something.
Never happens with Linux on the same machine, so it has to be something Windows is doing. Windows has gotten much MUCH better from the 3.1/95 days, but it still has some problems.
Parent
Try adding crappy 3rd party software to linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Try adding crappy 3rd party software to linux (Score:4, Insightful)
Uptime of WindowsXP box at university when I start using it is less than 7 minutes. I'm not kidding you.
simple things like looking up my schedule tend to crash IE
to the point where system locks up. Opening PDFs leads to similar result.
These are all dell p4 2.4ghz boxes. we have more than 500 of them. I can reproduce effects on any single box.
Then there are some boxes which dual boot to linux. Never had a single problem. Not a single crash or hang.
And don't get me starting about scanning on windows with HP printers.
Scan->wait 8 seconds for pretty HP scan wizard to show up then it hides then scanner starts scanning, then you save the file one by one. On linux: start xsane (UI is ugly but does the job nicely). Specify base name and counter length. Then just keep clicking 'Scan' and feeding a new page.
Also users need to do control+C control+V windows instead of select and pressing scroll mouse in most linux GUIs.
No Virtual desktops on windows.
List goes on and on.
I honestly don't know of a better way to constupate your work then to use a Windows enabled desktop. Your productivity approaches 0.
So those who say Linux is difficult to use should just fuck off. They have spent years and years learning how to do things in Windows and LEARNING the WORKAROUNDS to things that should have worked and then complain that the workarounds don't work and you have to do things propertly.
ok, rant is over.
~omi
Parent
Re:Neat! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Neat! (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole point of the VM/CMS operation system from IBM was hardware abstraction. That's where the name comes from: Virtual Machine CMS. VM/CMS was providing an abstract CMS system (CMS being the predecessor of VM/CMS) for each process or task, so you could use multiple virtual CMS systems on your hardware.
Just because WinNT uses hardware abstraction doesn't make it an innovative idea from Microsoft.
Same about KDevelop. Ever used an OSF Motif Toolkit? They are around since the early days of Motif (around 1988), and the Visual series from Microsoft could easily be called an ripoff. Not to forget the Turbo Pascal/Borland Pascal/Delphi IDEs or again IBM with the VisualAge series of compilers.
The real power of Microsoft is not innovation, it is the sheer manpower and organisation they have to integrate ideas that proved to work into a single, quite coherent system (even though in the beginning, Microsoft's offerings didn't integrate very well into each other... The first MS Office suites for instance had different file dialogs in every program, and different ways to set up the printer... but it got better every version).
And for becoming "more and more similar to Windows": If the default installation is in a substantial way different than Windows, the whining goes: "Steep learning curve! It's too different!". If the differences are hidden, then the whining is: "It's becoming more and more Windows! Where is the innovation?" It seems as if the GUI developers have to choose between Scylla and Charybdis here.
Parent
Re:Neat! (Score:5, Informative)
Winboys complain that Linboys say Windows crashes. In 1998, it did. (Incidentally, it still does now. Admittedly, less often, but the only reason you never see it on XP is that it automatically reboots, rather than sitting there with the BSOD.)
Yet, the Winboys continually complain about problems with Linux that were solved in 2000 or earlier.
There are plenty of Linux-only games available, and lots of the good ones that use OpenGL, rather than DirectX crap, have Linux ports. If a developer uses a platform-specific 3D API, then refuses to do a Linux port because it would be essentially a complete rewrite to use a platform-independent 3D API, that they could have used in the first place.....it's not Linux's fault. Blame the developer, for being short-sighted and stupid.
Again, 1998 problem. Get yourself up to date, and see my answer to number 1.
KPackage, Synaptic, YaST, and many other package managers will install just about anything on most distros. Sure, there's the odd one that doesn't work, but you run across that with Windows, too. Ever try installing Norton Anti-Virus 2001 on Windows XP? Both released in the same year, but they're incompatible.
One more thing...if you'd been using Konqueror to post your message, it would have let you know that you spelled 'application' incorrectly. Nice to see IE being so innovative.....NOT! Notepad, Wordpad, DOSedit, TextPad, Boxer, Zeus, GWD Text Editor, EditPlus.....
All text editors for Windows. And the first three come bundled - and installed by default - with Windows XP.
Like what? Windows Update? I have yet to run across any website that doesn't work with anything other than IE, with the exception of Panda Software's Activescan. Unfortunately, it's ActiveX only. Again, not the fault of Linux, but the fault of a poor programmer who used a platform-specific technology to provide a function that could be provided with a platform-independent technology. Trend's housecall, however, works with Java, so will run on just about anything.
Wireless networking randomly popping up and down. Unrecognized hardware being completely ignored and hidden during install, rather than warning the user. Running any old twit as admin by default.
All examples of lack of polish and foresight in Windows.
Can't find enough arguments, so you need to repeat yourself? Not only that, but you chose to repeat the arguments that aren't valid, as the problem was solved years ago.
I know I'm not supposed to respond to trolls, but they're just so fun to shred into tiny little pieces.....
Parent
Re:Neat! (Score:4, Informative)
There's a Debian administration guide available at http://cdrom.gnutemberg.org/manuali/debian/refere
As far as recent games for Linux....well, I don't play recent games for Windows, either, so I couldn't really tell you for sure. There is, however, a Doom 3 Linux release either coming very soon, or already available. Google for "Doom 3 for linux", and see for yourself.
Parent
Re:Wating for this (Score:5, Interesting)
Just as soon as KDE and Gnome merge, and XP gets Final Cut Pro - never gonna happen.. too many egos in the way.
Parent
Re:Wating for this (Score:5, Insightful)
That's only part of the issue. Lots of people don't want a KDE and Gnome merger because of philosophical differences on what a desktop should be like. I do, however, wish that on many forked or duplicated projects people would take just a second to think about who, besides themselves, a fork (or duplication) would actually benefit. When the forked or new version provides no significant new features, it's probably doing more harm than good.
Parent
Re:Plug N Pray for Linux (Score:4, Funny)
what I'm scared of:
>unkown hardware device detected
>please wait while linux installs drivers for your new hardware
Is it too late to contribute to the openBSOD project...?
Parent
Re:write your own (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want help feel free ask what the current state of the driver is, but don't expect anyone to do anything about it unless you're prepared to help, or give them money.
btw. MS are exactly the same. Try asking them when 'feature x' will work. They'll want money before you'll get a sensible answer about it (in that case you don't even have the option of doing it yourself).
Parent
If you don't like the answers, (Score:4, Insightful)
then exercise your freedom of choice, and stop using Linux.
Parent
Re:Could distros do this anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
Say you have a function, foo, and it takes three integer arguments. So, here's your theoretical function:Now, say all of a sudden, you decide that the variable d in foo should be passed in (maybe d being 42 is correct for all but one variant of hardware device). At this point, you have two options:
1. Update function foo to include support for parameter d:This breaks the binary compatibility (well, and source for that matter). Probably you'd see segmentation faults/invalid memory accesses, etc.
2. Create a new function (say, foo2) that includes support for d, and maintains backwards compatibility:Then, update foo as such:Existing drivers don't see that foo has changed, and new drivers needing the extra parameter can use foo2. Binary (and source) compatibility is retained, but it becomes a major pain in the butt for the developers. Imagine several of these changes happening, and you (possibly) end up with foo2 through foo15.
Quite frankly, I can see why Linus doesn't want to do it, for both technical and the ideals behind it. Personally, I believe it's the ideals that he favors, rather than the technical side of it. That said, on the x86, maintaining this might not be so bad, but maybe on other platforms it is more difficult. Back when software was typically written in assembly (my favorite example that comes to mind is GEOS on the Commodore 64, it had a huge API, which retained backwards compatibility with older versions), not only did you have to make sure that the parameters passed in were the same (usually on the stack, or registers, or inline), but you also had to make sure that the entry-point addresses stayed the same too (most often accomplished via a jump table).
-- Joe
Parent
Re:So while blasting Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Also, Microsoft charges for getting drivers digitally signed to get on their database, and I severely doubt many are of decent quality (I know the nvidia ones they have are useless). Its easy to code somethign when you charge for addition to the database, because its just like any other database.. But to do full, dynamic driver management where you can get drivers that dont even exist on your system, thats what MS is NOT able to do. In fact, because they put poor drivers in their database, I'd say you get driver upgrade warnings which wipe out your already working drivers and replace them with poor copies.. Evidence of poor design.
Either way. I dont believe either HAL or Driver on demand is really a clone, but then again, I am the author of Driver on Demand, and I'm biased. The focus in recent times for driver on demand has been to create a driver search engine anyway first.
Parent