On Sat, 2007-09-08 at 17:30 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Matthew Saltzman wrote:
>
> > There certainly are reasons to want development to proceed on kernel
> > technology and drivers. The state of wireless drivers in Linux is just
> > sad, for example. Getting new drivers that support wext correctly and
> > improve performance and functionality is a worthy goal, even for older
> > hardware.
>
> Is there some reason to think this can't be done within driver modules
> having a stable interface to the kernel? In spite of the fact that
> other popular OS's can do that? Personally, I think that working
> drivers for most popular hardware would have been provided by the
> vendors for Linux ages ago if binaries were acceptable and could be
> expected to work for several years unchanged. Apparently, that doesn't
> suit someone's politics.
I haven't really followed the politics on the kernel mailing lists
except by hearsay, so I will defer to your superior knowledge of that.
I suppose it could be that the API evolves for technical reasons. Or
some mix.
>
> > Also see the new EPEL repository, where Fedora developers build RHEL
> > versions of Fedora packages. And of course, several independent repos,
> > such as ATRPMs and RPMforge.
>
> This is a step in the right direction, but why back into it piecemeal?
> Build a distro that installs that way in the first place.
That's certainly feasible. Do you have the time? I don't. Maybe
somebody with the same idea will.
--
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
