Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 30 Jan 2007 17:08:26 -0500 | From | Jeff Garzik <> | Subject | Re: Free Linux Driver Development! |
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Roland Dreier wrote: > > > Well, we can disagree about the majority of drivers. My feeling is > > > that most of the drivers that are really used by lots of people get > > > support beyond just a dump of docs -- in fact often vendors are > > > maintaining them, eg e1000, tg3, cciss, etc., to pick some running on > > > the boxes I have around here. > > > > Check your history... tg3 was written by me and DaveM, and only after > > years was it picked up by the vendor as their official Linux > > driver. You have picked an excellent counter-example to your own > > argument. > > OK, fair enough, I forgot about tg3. But on the other hand, you wrote > it without docs, actually _in spite of_ Broadcom, right? > > Which I think makes my point that documentation is neither necessary > nor sufficient for a good Linux driver. Documentation helps, but if > no one competent cares about the device then the driver won't get > written. On the other hand, if the device is important enough, the > driver will get written without documentation or vendor support.
That's your point?? I thought your point was (quoting your words)
> it's a > bit disingenous to suggest that all a company has to do to get a > driver written and supported is throw some documentation over the > wall. And it's crazy to suggest that the driver will work on every > platform and be supported by enterprise distros.
To repeat -- that's how most Linux drivers have been written, /particularly/ the ones used most by users of enterprise distros.
> > > OK, but why isn't your army of volunteers fixing them? > > > > Because nobody has hardware for them? > > Greg said hardware wasn't necessary...
I did not say "no developers [...]"
I said "nobody"
> > > And I seem to recall there's more SATA chipset documentation than Jeff > > > Garzik has time to implement support for. > > > > I seriously doubt you can come up with even a single concrete example here. > > Sorry, I thought you said there was interesting stuff to do with the > Promise documentation you got.
Mikael took care of it already. And its supported by enterprise distros.
> I guess Nvidia ADMA is pretty much > done now.
Yep. Without docs, even. And its supported by enterprise distros.
> > What experience? AFAICS, pretty much all modern hardware in use > > outside of ATI/NVIDIA graphics is supported by Linux. > > Sure, popular hardware support is pretty good. But there are still > pretty serious gaps, for example Ralink wireless drivers are still not > upstream even with the vendor trying to help (and I think Ralink > wireless is a good example of how we can't really keep the promises > Greg is making).
How so? They appear to be working with wireless devs to get their driver into the tree.
> And there's plenty of stuff in-tree with lots of users that's in > pretty dire shape, like ISDN (and the fact that we still > CONFIG_ISDN_I4L). OK, it's not "modern" but Greg is also promising > that we'll keep everything up-to-date with any upstream kernel > changes, and there's obviously large chunks of the driver tree where > that doesn't happen.
Yes, large chunks of legacy ISA drivers, m68k drivers, and similar situations where the userbase has dwindled to a handful over a decade.
Jeff
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