begin quoting Tracy R Reed as of Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 06:28:00PM -0700: > Andrew Lentvorski wrote: > >This is kind of funny since it was the "runs on any old crap hardware" > >that helped make Linux more popular than *BSD which simply refused to > >support certain broken hardware. > > Linux still does run on any old crap hardware. But you need to get a > version of Linux produced from when that hardware was common. Don't you
I can donate some old Linux ditros! How about a full set of slackware floppies? > think it would be rather difficult to insist on never throwing any > driver away and maintaining support for every piece of hardware that was > ever supported? No. > That means things constantly get more complicated and > there is more and more code to maintain and change every time some API > changes. It would mean more and more work for every kernel release. It > just does not seem practical. And? It's better to spread the cost around and force people to upgrade if they want to "stay current"? The M$ meme really has infected Linux. That's sad. I think it would be better to design your drivers to a clean interface, so that they don't _have_ to be rewritten when you change something else on the system. Further, change those interfaces infrequently, after a fair bit of thought and contemplation. You might even provide adaptor code, so that old interfaces could be used years and years later, with a small performance hit. Of course, this would effectively rule out using C++ for anything. But hey, that's hardly a loss! -- _ |\_ \| -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
