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Software Hardware Linux

Simplifying Linux Driver Installation 377

Posted by timothy 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."
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Simplifying Linux Driver Installation More

Simplifying Linux Driver Installation

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  • Neat! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by storem ( 117912 )
    Next thing you know there won't be any reason anymore to stay with XP :)

    • Re:Neat! (Score:2, Funny)

      by Slayk ( 691976 )
      There was ever a reason?

      • Re:Neat! (Score:3, Informative)

        by spamsk8r ( 777897 )
        Games.

      • Re:Neat! (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AntiGenX ( 589768 )
        Actually, as a Mac/Windows/Linux user... I have to say XP is very compelling. I can run it full-tilt (compiling, rendering... etc) for weeks without a reboot. It's not the Windows of 5-10 years ago. Of course some people like to hate Microsoft just because it's "cool", and those people will never change their minds. Me, I live in the real world where I have to run lots of different systems. I admit that I HATED Microsoft from Win3.1-2000, but it would be hard for anyone that has used their products through

        • Re:Neat! (Score:2, Insightful)

          by DNS-and-BIND ( 461968 )
          Wow...after five huge revisions, and countless years of work, MS has an operating system that doesn't crash (often)! What a great reason to like them.

          • Try adding crappy 3rd party software to linux (Score:4, Insightful)

            by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:45PM (#10230828)
            and see how stable it is. Much as I hate Microsoft (and I do), Windows XP is a stable operating system when it's running good quality, name brand software/hardware. At least the desktop is, no comment on server stuff. Where you run into problems is all the crappy 3rd party drivers and add ins that run in the background and make tons of changes to they system. If you start adding that stuff to Linux you'll have the same problems. On the other hand, Linux's openness makes adding this crap harder, and often unecessary...

            • By definition, isn't all Linux software (aside from the a few things) third party? I mean, it's not like IBM and Novell are coding every application you use on a Linux desktop...

            • Re:Try adding crappy 3rd party software to linux (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 13, 2004 @02:07AM (#10233155)
              LOL!!

              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

          • Re:Neat! (Score:3, Insightful)

            by bob65 ( 590395 )
            Wow...after five huge revisions, and countless years of work, MS has an operating system that doesn't crash (often)! What a great reason to like them.

            No, it's not a great reason to like them. It's not a reason to like them at all. It *is* a good reason to like Windows XP. You can simultaneously hate Microsoft if you want - that shouldn't affect your evaluation of a particular product.

          • Wow...after five huge revisions, and countless years of work, MS has an operating system that doesn't crash (often)!

            Segfault anyone?

            Wow...after countless revisions and a decade of work , programs and drivers are still a nightmare to install on Linux. Dependency this, dependency that, oops wrong GCC version and of course "Oh shit I updated the kernel so I have to recompile my graphics card drivers again."

            Can't remember the last time I had to do anymore than a single mouseclick to start installing a p

        • Re:Neat! (Score:5, Interesting)

          by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:45PM (#10230832) Homepage
          I agree. Windows has gotten MUCH better over the years. But I have noticed one thing that consistantly forces me to reboot my computer: disk activity. I can run my computer for weeks doing normal things and have no problem (XP Pro, 900mhz, 512mb for the record).

          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.

          • Do you get that little pop up about "not enough virtual memory, increasing swap file size" or something to that effect? Once you're past the minimum virtual memory size, Windows does something to increase the swap file size.

            I haven't properly tested or researched this, so YMMV, but several times now, that process has slowed my PC to a crawl - during AND after the increase.

            Though, that shouldn't have anything to do with a disk defrag...

    • Re:Neat! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LehiNephi ( 695428 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:08PM (#10230500) Journal
      That's no joke. Why haven't I switched permanently to Linux? The list of reasons is quickly becoming shorter and shorter.
      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.

  • Misnomer (Score:2, Insightful)

    by whiteranger99x ( 235024 )
    What gets me is that this would be geared for either for distributions trying to enhance the user's "linux experience" or just to help newbies configure their devices "painlessly".

    Meanwhile, anyone with an ATI card, for example, would still be just as dead in the water as before. Of course, I would be curious to see how well this turns out.
    • But isn't that what we (as a /.) society want to do? I mean, the only way to move people to Linux is to make it relatively easy to use and setup. A project like this is a step in the right direction.

      Hell, there are times when I wish I could configure devices "painlessly." I don't mind running to a command line every now and then, but there have been times where I've wanted to just plug the damned thing in and not run through pages of Readmes or forum posts.......

      It will be interesting to see what will h
  • would be great if i could simply #apt-get install sblive or #apt-cache search wintv not neccessarily wanting apt to do it but just something as easy as apt.
  • After all, I can get wireless ethernet, type stuff like Salvete, amc!, and all sorts of stuff on Linux.

  • Tough to stay with XP (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JorDan Clock ( 664877 ) <jordanclock@gmail.com> on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:40PM (#10230255)
    If getting drivers becomes that easy, I'll be considering atleast dual-booting. Drivers have always been something that have kept me away from Linux, but if they're as easy to find as plugging in a device, I'll switch in no time. Now, if only those manufacturers would put out some decent quality drivers, I wouldn't have much reason to stay on Windows.
    • >>Now, if only those manufacturers would put out some decent quality drivers, I wouldn't have much reason to stay on Windows.

      Hell how about manufactors actually release drivers on their own.

      Question for the Kernel coders, what perctage of drivers are reverse engineered?? 60-70%

    • For Linux on the desktop, this is probably going to be a deciding factor. Ov of the greatest features of windows is the ability to plug anything into the system, and have it just work, and thats what I would love to have in Linx. Also if the OSS community focuses on a single method of releasing the drivers, I would assume that this would make Hardware companies, be more apt to releasing their drivers to this system.

    • Re:Tough to stay with XP (Score:4, Interesting)

      by MBCook ( 132727 ) <foobarsoft@foobarsoft.com> on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:03PM (#10230463) Homepage
      I know what you mean. The other day I bought a USB key drive and plugged it into my Windows computer and... it just worked! I can't remember the last time that kind of thing happened. No drivers, no install, no utilities, it just WORKED. Now that was because the driver was already in Windows. Sometimes that happens with other hardware too that Windows already has the driver for.

      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).

      • Ok, to answer your question, no I haven't seen this work either. The USB-Mass storage devices are fully supported with Linux as well. Just plug them into a recent system and they are ready to go. The problem is the user never gets any feedback on the gui. You have to dmesg and look what scsi-id the device got and then you have to mount it. Not exactly elegant. The reason why OS X has it so much easier is trivial: There is only very limited hardware for the Apple platform.

        I don't think that havin a driver l
        • That's true. But for more obscure hardware, finding a driver can be a killer. And as you said, even for common hardware other things (kernel version, stack size, glibc version, phase of the moon) can make things tough. And things are probably much worse if you operate on a non-x86 platform.

        • Re:Tough to stay with XP (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:55PM (#10230909)
          Plug famous brand USB storage devices into a Fedora Core or recent Red Hat and it will appear as a user-owned mountable device immediately. No reading system logs. No trying to understand mount flags, it Just Works(TM)

          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.

    • Re:Tough to stay with XP (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's ALREADY that easy.

      If you're using a kernel built by your distribution, such that it has ALL of the drivers the kernel supports (quite a damn lot), then hotplug, or discover automatically set it up, at boot time, or when you plug it in.

      I've tried things from scanners, to USB microphones, flash drives, whatever. It works no fail, if it's supported by the kernel or an outside module. What's really cool is that you can modify the scripts such that you could have your CF cards automatically downloaded (

    • Re:Tough to stay with XP (Score:5, Informative)

      by HermanAB ( 661181 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @07:20PM (#10231074)
      Get a Knoppix or LiveCD disc. You'll be amazed at how good Linux driver support is. Chances are that everything you got on your machine will just work, without you having to install anything manually.

  • Okay... (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:43PM (#10230285) Homepage
    to enable Linux desktops download the drivers automatically when the user plugs in
    her new hardware device
    What? There are girls using Linux now? Why was I not notified of this!

    • Re:Okay... (Score:4, Funny)

      by OmegaBlac ( 752432 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:50PM (#10231570)
      What? There are girls using Linux now? Why was I not notified of this!
      Probably because you busy reading man pages.

  • A hardware abstraction layer? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ogl_codemonkey ( 706920 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:44PM (#10230296)
    What, like a kernel?

  • A scam! (Score:5, Funny)

    by iamdrscience ( 541136 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:47PM (#10230323) Homepage
    Hardware Abstraction Layer for Linux simplifying device changes
    Haha! You thought I would be fooled that easily. Hardware Abstraction Layer? You mean HAL? Obviously this project was created by people hoping to expedite the construction of an intelligent machine capable of going awry and killing humans. You sick bastards.

  • Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AntiGenX ( 589768 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:49PM (#10230341)
    As the article points out Linus is vehemently against making the kernel API/ABI's stable. On the one hand this allows them to add knew stuff all the damn time, but it breaks drivers. In my opinion this is what's holding linux back. It contributes to Linux having crappy hardware support. (Yes it has crappy hardware support people!) Sure it supports LOTS of devices, but a lot of them require some voodoo to make them work. That's all fine and well for people like me, but average users don't want to dick around with modprobe.conf. I'm sure a lot of vendors would be more willing to put out their own drivers if they didn't think they'd have retest/recode every kernel release

    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)

      by jhoger ( 519683 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:13PM (#10230546) Homepage
      You missed the real reason for this tactic: to `encourage' hardware manufacturers to play nice and release the source code to their drivers by making open source drivers the path of least resistance.
    • Solution: "This driver works with kernel X.XX."

      C'mon, how many end-users really need to recompile a kernel for a needed feature? Most people who compile kernels are just wanking it for their own satisfaction, the box would be fine with the kernel Redhat or SuSE or whatever happened to get installed from the CD.

    • Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      A.)The HAL had nothing to do with drivers!
      B.)Drivers are written by hardware makers NOT Microsoft.
      3.) The people who make the drivers now know *how* to write the drivers. They just dont.

    • Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SamNmaX ( 613567 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:27PM (#10230679)
      As the article points out Linus is vehemently against making the kernel API/ABI's stable. On the one hand this allows them to add knew stuff all the damn time, but it breaks drivers. In my opinion this is what's holding linux back. It contributes to Linux having crappy hardware support. (Yes it has crappy hardware support people!) Sure it supports LOTS of devices, but a lot of them require some voodoo to make them work.

      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.

    • Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @07:09PM (#10230995) Journal
      The problem is, Linus is letting his pursuit of one goal (encourage open-source drivers) hurt progress toward another (stable, user-friendly drivers for every single device out there). Changing the kernel APIs all the time does encourage open-source drivers, and it allows easier kernel innovation, but it has many, many disadvantages:
      1. It requires changes in many drivers for every single kernel release, which takes valuable developer time.
      2. It makes drivers less stable and testable due to the constant changes they must undergo.
      3. It discourages driver development outside of the main kernel tree, which in turn...
      4. bloats the main kernel with too many drivers.
      5. Upgrading the kernel requires an upgrade and recompile of every driver you use, or you risk incompatibility or instability.
      6. It is nearly impossible to have a database holding every driver you might need for a desktop Linux system.
      7. 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.

      • Re:Won't happen anytime soon... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dmaxwell ( 43234 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:08PM (#10231370)
        Who will maintain this fork? It will get crustier and crustier and crustier due to the absolute need to NEVER break a binary only driver. Once it gets crusty enough, it won't be possible to backport the changes from Linus' kernel which WILL continue to be developed? Furthermore, this fork will be x86 only. The only real reason this fork will have to exist will be for consumer x86 desktops. This will put off even more devs.

        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.

  • Wrong problem (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:54PM (#10230382)
    It is obvious that I as an corporate user, would refuse to install *anything* on my Linux system that has not gone through my distributor. After all, that's why I pay them. And pushing third-party binary modules in my running kernel would be a very quick way of nullifying their support agreements.

    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)

    by owlstead ( 636356 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:57PM (#10230397)
    In the article the ABI was mentioned as the interface of the drivers to the kernel. Maybe it could be possible to create a higher level driver API on top of that? This API could then be ported to newer linux versions?

    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)

    by Magila ( 138485 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @05:58PM (#10230412) Homepage
    As cute as that little pun is, PnP on WinNT 5.x Just Works(TM) the vast majority of the time and life is good. It's one area were Windows has a clear advantage over Linux and it's great to see the gap is finally starting to be closed.

    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)

    by bluewee ( 677282 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:14PM (#10230547)
    This may be slightly off topic.

    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.

    • 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.

      Good idea. That's what the Newton did. Of course, this won't help you with Linux, where the driver API changes every few months.

      This may raise the cost of the item, but I would rather have a item that I can use anywhere on any machine without havi

    • Re:Information (Score:3, Informative)

      by globalar ( 669767 )
      I'm not in development on this, but I have reviewed some of the process.

      USB operates with a host controller on a bus. When a device is connected on a PnP system, the controller detects it and polls it for a VID/PID (Vendor ID/Product ID), which is defined by some USB industry group at a cost (though there are some for non-commercial uses). This is polled along with a host of other descriptors. The USB Core (the sum of a controller driver, hub driver, and other things) controls this process for the PnP

    • Re:Information (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 )
      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.

      That was tried, years ago, and was the norm an all early PCs. It was called BIOS then - a low - level program unique to the hardware kept on the hardware itself. You see remnants of that system still - if you try to put a 200 GB HDD into an old Penti

  • HAL them all (Score:2, Interesting)

    by nbert ( 785663 )
    I'm actually quite satisfied with the way linux handles devices and their drivers right now (this is stuff for nerds after all).

    But I always wonder why there isn't a huge effort to build an abstract abstraction layer... it could look like this:

    Every piece of hardware is equipped with a standardized storage chip, which contains detailed information about the purpose of the device and instructions on how to "talk" to it. Basically I'm looking for a way to enable any OS to figure out a driver on its own.

    I k
    • Every piece of hardware is equipped with a standardized storage chip, which contains detailed information about the purpose of the device and instructions on how to "talk" to it. Basically I'm looking for a way to enable any OS to figure out a driver on its own.

      Like UDI, FCode, or EFI bytecode? It's been tried; Linus said no every time.

  • Sure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:32PM (#10230731) Journal
    So, someone creates a stable as in abi/api HAL for linux. Then all sorts of manufaturers start releasing binary only drivers. Hypotheticly these are of good quality and we don't wind up with the windows BSOD type problems, this is very unlikely. We still get lots of binary only drivers with wierd licensing that limits distribution and what you can do with the hardware. Because drivers for stuff are avalible noone have interest in maintaining open drivers. Linux becomes as encombered as windows when you want to do anthing with it besides desktop PC. Forget having a cheep OS with lots of hardware support to build and sell your custom solutions with. Now since the hardware support will still probably be better and more complete on that M$ os all those little embeded things are gonna end up with winCE/pocketPc200X/XPembeded or whatever. This will kill the one market where Linux is begging to become the player to beat rather then the other option. If this takes off linux is gonna end up where it was five years ago on the desks of us geeks, rather then were it is now on half of the little and BIG network appliences out there even if it is unknow to the user. Once that happens we will lose lots of the corporte support and contributes to the kernel as well. Linus made the right call to not stabilize the ABI and force vendors to either make open drivers or at least have to put up with a wrapper.

    • Re:Sure (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ctr2sprt ( 574731 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @12:45AM (#10232777)
      Remember that freedom means giving the people right to make bad decisions if that's what they want to do. Freedom of speech means I can stand up in a public place and make a complete ass of myself and nobody will stop me. (Well, the government won't, anyway.) Free (as in speech) software means that you have to give people the right to make bad choices about how software should be written, designed, and used. While we certainly all hope that stuff like the Linux kernel will encourage more free software and drivers, we have to respect the rights of others to decide differently. To do otherwise is to take away their freedom, and that's contrary to the entire goal of free software.

      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.

  • From the article ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MuMart ( 537836 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @06:56PM (#10230919) Homepage
    The kernel is possibly the most critical component in a Linux system.
    Well, I guess it wouldn't be called a Linux system without one :)

  • Nice (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vandan ( 151516 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @07:13PM (#10231027) Homepage
    I was actually just thinking about this sort of thing the other day ... with a Gentoo slant of course.

    I'd just set up hotplug, which I'm now using for a number of reasons, my Alcatel USB ADSL modem, Canon Digital Camera, USB MP3 player, etc. It dawned on me that these devices are supposed to have unique identifer codes, and that it would be great if *someone* would keep a centralised database of codes against software / config changes. Then I thought a device being added could trigger an 'emerge' process on my Gentoo box and an 'etc-update' to merge in the config file changes.

    Of course there are a lot of missing pieces in my ideas. But anyway, I agree with the general idea. Good on 'em!

  • Good idea. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gentlewhisper ( 759800 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @07:38PM (#10231195)
    I think this would be great.

    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)
    • 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.

      What does that have to do with Linux? Firefox runs under Windows too.

    • Re:Good idea. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gad_zuki! ( 70830 )
      Why are you changing their OS?

      >. Cos months later I got a phone call from my folks asking me how to get rid of those pr0n popups and stuff

      They could be using FireFox. Or IE with activeX disabled and a pop-up blocker. Or IE with simply SP2 installed. Or Opera. Automatic updates turned on. And a copy of ad aware or spybot.

      You might as well teach them about spyware and untrustworthy downloads. Regardless of their platform they will have to deal with it. If desktop Linux took off next year there would

  • Linus' policy on the kernel ABI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by brsmith4 ( 567390 ) <{brsmith4} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:10PM (#10231375)
    Easy solution:

    fork();

    Why?

    As much as I like and respect Linus and his decisions, it seems the kernel has become an "entity" of sorts. Times are changing and certain problems will arise when one uses time-honored policies instead of progressive thinking (not to say Linus is not a progressive thinker, on the contrary...)

    A fork, based on a recent stable release, that is kept current by applying patches and fixes while preserving the existing driver ABI. Redhat does this when it back-ports features from newer kernels into its production kernels. Basically, let Linus and co. write the bleeding-edge kernels while said fork makes catastrophic changes to the driver ABI every two years or so instead of every three weeks.

    I may be wrong in my thinking, but a fork wouldn't hurt anything in my opinion. This wouldn't be a fork due to policy decisions e.g. FreeBSD + OpenBSD or XFree86 + Xorg, but a fork of necessity to provide hardware manufacturers a stable interface for supporting linux, therefore allowing them to focus more on improving their drivers' performance than on keeping up with each kernel release. Then, they can release binary drivers and rest assured that they will work for some period of time.

    Just my $0.02

  • Linus' Attitude is detrimental (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @08:23PM (#10231444) Homepage Journal
    While this is a bit off topic, its relevant.

    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.
    • Linus attitude is VERY simple - if companies want a driver API, then they should go, create it AND maitain it. He is not against, he is against waste of time of other developers on this question. He simply doesn't want to mess with that, period. And guess what - you can stop this rant and go with simple patch set which could create such driver API. After all, it's open source and GPL!

      So why companies, or at least someone don't try to do that? I will tell you why - because there is no easy solution for that

  • What about applications? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by grotgrot ( 451123 ) on Sunday September 12, 2004 @09:34PM (#10231860)
    What is needed is telling me what applications I could use with the devices. Many Linux applications use libusb and don't need a driver (in fact you can't use libusb against an interface that a driver has claimed).

    So if I plug in a cell phone, I should be told about BitPim for CDMA phones, and whatever is used for GSM phones. Whatever the scanner app is should appear for scanners. Epson printers should cause me to be told about mtink etc.

    And all this can be done outside the kernel.

  • Seems like a solution at the wrong place (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pspinler ( 257388 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @12:05AM (#10232623) Homepage
    The real problem isn't the kernels and the device support therein, rather, its the devices. Really, how many different ways do you need to send data to a printer, or a disk, or get images off a digital camera or webcam, or sound to and from a soundcard, or a 3d command pipeline to a vid card ? The plethora of different device interfaces for substantially identical devices is the real problem.

    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
    • There already are such standards. Why do you think we can run Linux on a PC at all? Because most things are always the same.
      This is caused by the fact that PC manufacturers today still maintain compatability with the IBM PC of 1980. The DOS from that PC will still run on today's systems.

      Look at USB too. There are some generic device types and they usually just work. More often on Linux even than on Windows.

      System-independent BIOS chips on boards also exist.

      In all, a lot has been done, but there alwa

  • Drivers NOT Desktops are the main problem of Linux (Score:3, Interesting)

    by maxm ( 20632 ) on Monday September 13, 2004 @04:46AM (#10233599) Homepage
    I have installed Linux several times over the last few years, on practically all of my hardware configurations.

    But none of the times has it been plug'n play. Often drivers that worked in one version didn't work on the next. So after the having a system where the graphics worked, It wouldn't on the next, because that driver had been left out. But now the sound would work. And so on.

    I don't remember ever having a painless installation. Untill I do, I won't bother with Linux as my workstation. It will keep running on a simple server with old and safe hardware where the drivers will allways work.

    Windows is more than stable enough for my desktop, and I can easily earn the price of XP Pro in the time I save not fiddling with drivers.

    The quality of the desktop really isn't the main problem for my Linux usage. I don't find it worse, just different. But using too much time installing the OS is a problem.

    I don't do it as a hobby. The OS is a tool, and so has to be efficient.

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