On Tue, 13 Jun 2006 16:05:40 -0400 Lee Revell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-06-13 at 22:49 +0300, Sergei Steshenko wrote: > > You are "aiming too low". > > > > The true answers are: > > > > 1) drivers running in user space; > > Agreed. This would help many things. For example it would solve the > binary only driver issue - vendors that feel the need to develop closed > drivers could do so without violating the GPL. > > Of course it will probably hurt performance some. > > > 2) stable, documented and adhered to ABI, so a driver compiled > > once by anybody for i386 (the biggest common denominator for > > IA31/IA64, AMD/Intel) will run as binary image with any kernel of any > > IA31/IA64 distribution. > > > > Not going to happen until 1) is solved. > > Anyway I don't think either of these will help with the main problem > faving ALSA drivers today - vendors do not bother to test their hardware > with Linux or contribute patches to make it work. Some of them even > claim to support Linux like BenQ - I have heard that some peoples BenQ > laptops came with a Linux CD, but sound does not work on any BenQ laptop > due to an unsupported codec! They clearly did not even test it. > > Lee > > > > _______________________________________________ > Alsa-user mailing list > Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user > Look, there is a good reason that "kernel image", "bzImage", etc. terms are used. That is, TODAY kernel is loaded as a binary image. So, I do not see any technical impossibility to make driver binary even today, that it runs in kernel space. Again, my point is: if kernel as a whole (possibly with compiled into it drivers) is loaded as binary image, why can't it be loaded part by part as multiple binary images ? One of the parts being (for example, ALSA) drivers. Also, ATI/Nvidia do have recompilable glue code and ‌binary driver proper TODAY. The sooner developers make binary drivers an easy possibility, the sooner we'll see support from HW vendors. The HW vendors should be given a chance to be able to minimally invest into development process - if a driver once was compiled for, say, IA32 and worked, it should be possible to run it on any sufficiently new IA32 distribution without any additional effort on HW vendor's side. _______________________________________________ Alsa-user mailing list Alsa-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/alsa-user
