I have to agree with Kevin on this. I am really amazed at the whole udev debacle. To me it seems that we are trying to adopt a form of "Plug and Play" for Linux. While the concept is cool, I wonder if it is really necessary. What I mean is, the old method (tons of files in /dev) Just Worked(TM). If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Now having said that, I am not a programmer so I am not sure how much work it has been to keep all of those special files.
Kevin's problem appears to be with the driver support in the kernel though (it's a USB timeout), rather the presence or absence of a node in the /dev directory. Even with a good old-fashioned /dev full of entries, the USB support would be broken, wouldn't it - see Bug #128602?
Paul.
