lkml.org 
[lkml]   [1998]   [Apr]   [4]   [last100]   RSS Feed
Views: [wrap][no wrap]   [headers]  [forward] 
 
Messages in this thread
/
Date
From
SubjectRe: Linux-2.1.92 - Feature Freeze


On Fri, 3 Apr 1998 linker@nightshade.ml.org wrote:
> On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> [Horst von Brand questions the sanity of not having complete PNP in 2.2]
> > It really is wise.
> >
> > The MicroSoft PnP standard is truly a really _bad_ standard. I refuse to
> > have that kind of setup in my kernel - the whole point with Linux it to
> > have an operating system that is _better_ than the crud MS keeps throwing
> > out.
> >
> > Have you noticed how well Linux autodetects hardware even _without_ any PR
> > sticker that says "PnP" on it? PnP is just a marketing term. We need some
> > very minimal support to avoid trampling on some IO ranges etc, but we
> > don't want anything more than the minimal requirements, because we aren't
> > going to make the same silly mistakes MS does.
> >
> > Linus
>
> MS does not create the hardware, if your intention is to have a system
> that can support all sane hardware configurations thats fine..

Yes. MS created the PnP standard, but the PnP standard is much more than
just the hardware.

Also, a _lot_ of the PnP standard is not really anything conceptually
"PnP" at all - a lot of it can be considered to be just part of any normal
driver. The 3c509 driver has been "PnP aware" for a long time (to the
degree that it sometimes has problems finding one of the older 3c509 cards
that don't support PnP), but nobody ever claimed that it needed "PnP
support from the kernel".

THAT is one of my main arguments against PnP. MicroSoft made it into this
semi-cohesive thing that is a complex rats nest, and you can often look at
the whole problem from a totally different standpoint. The whole term
"PnP" is just fraught with all these marketing issues that have zero,
zilch, nada, no technical merit at all.

We'll support PnP hardware, but not by trying to implement some rickety
PnP framework. We already do a lot of what PnP does - allocating IO ports
and keeping the reservation information alive. We may need minor tweaks to
that.

Linus


-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu

\
 
 \ /
  Last update: 2005-03-22 13:42    [W:0.292 / U:0.504 seconds]
©2003-2020 Jasper Spaans|hosted at Digital Ocean and TransIP|Read the blog|Advertise on this site