> You say you don't have to recompile the kernel to add support for things, I > remember initially working with ubuntu 8.01 and having to recompile the > kernel to add support for the Broadcom wireless cards because downloading > and installing a wireless kernel package someone else made that only allowed > flashing of some cards was useless.
This is not something you need to recompile the kernel to do. You do need the kernel source code (check your package manager) and the config used by the running kernel (available in a pseudo-file) and that's enough to do an out-of-tree build of your driver. The idea that a user-mode application should be able to update firmware without kernel help is patently ridiculous no matter what (modern general-purpose) operating system you are expert in, since it requires I/O privileges that are not held by user-mode applications. But such an application can be distributed with the source code and build system for an out-of-tree build of the relevant kernel code, in which case administrator rights will be needed to insert the kernel module, but the installation process needn't involve replacing any boot files as would be done after a kernel recompile. _______________________________________________ b43-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/b43-dev
