Re: Why linux is so stupid with hardware drivers?

From: Norm Dresner (ndrez_at_att.net)
Date: 05/09/04 

Date: Sun, 09 May 2004 18:20:06 GMT

<Jens.Toerring@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:2g6q8cF53blhU1@uni-berlin.de...
> Kasper Dupont <kasperd@daimi.au.dk> wrote:
>
> << stupid blatherings by ValGLA snipped >>
>
> > You obviously don't know what you are talking about. And
> > half of what you said is incorrect. Is this just another
> > troll post, or is there a point somewhere? I couldn't
> > find one.
>
> Looks like a very poorly executed troll. A reasonable troll attempt
> should come at least with a few correct facts to make the rest look
> credible at a first glance.

    Okay, you're both right that it looks like trolling, But he does have a
point [or two, maybe].

First, my background: I started programming mainframes before there were any
micros and I've run [part-time] a moderately successful software company
that sold to both the CP/M and DOS communities B.W. [Before the Windows
meltdown of these markets]. I've had over 5 years of experience developing
(real-time) Linux kernel drivers for complex custom systems that are used in
testing even more complex systems and I've developed many DOS/AMX drivers
and a few Windows device drivers too.

>From the point of view of a device driver programmer, Linux is both
primitive and friendly. The primitiveness -- perhaps a better word is
simplicity -- is both a blessing and a curse. As a WDD [Windows Device
Driver] programmer I have a (literally) bewildering API from which to choose
the perfect system call to do what I want, but I have to choose the exactly
perfect system call or my WDD won't work. The Linux environment is much
simpler, and it's correspondingly easier to find the API call I need, though
it won't always be exactly what I need and I'll have to work around that.

But the absolute worst part of LDD [Linux Device Driver] writing is that
there's no backward-compatibility built into the kernel and the API for
identically-named functions can change between major versions. There are
some Windows 95 Device Drivers that can still be loaded and function
correctly with Windows XP! Once a kernel function API is developed, it's
frozen in concrete and can always be used [until support is removed, which
does happen but not as often as you'd think it should].

One system I wrote and have maintenance [and upgrading] responsibility for
runs (currently) on a 1.3 GHz P-III with 512 MB RAM. When it's fully
operational, there are 12 separate user programs and 11 loadable kernel
modules in it. I started this using RTLinux with a 2.0.3x kernel and have
migrated it through 2.2.x and 2.4.x versions. The 2.2.x==>2.4.x evolution
was mostly painless, though there was at least one Linux kernel feature
[wait queues] whose API changed significantly enough that I had to re-write
some code. This has never happened [at least to me] in Windows. The 2.0.x
==>2.2.x jump was quite painful and required [IIRC] several months to get
everything right.

</RANT>

    Norm Dresner

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