[ros-dev] HP webOS goes opensource

[Aleksey Bragin]

On 18.01.2012 18:14, Jakob Eriksson wrote:
> On January 18, 2012 at 2:54 PM Adam<geekdundee at gmail.com>  wrote:
>
>> Although that would require recompiling the kernel just to
>> install/uninstall drivers. I do understand loadable modules are
>> supported but I'm not sure this applies to drivers. And if it does, I
>> doubt it would apply to all drivers.
>   
>   
> No recompile. It applies to all drivers for PCI and USB devices and huge bunch
> of other things. Almost everything is loadable, including all routing tricks.
It's a loadable module, yes, and it loads dynamically indeed. There is 
one issue though: the binary driver itself has to be recompiled with 
every Linux kernel update. I personally experience this when I patch the 
bt8x8 video capture device driver for my 8 ports capturing card, every 
time I manually patch source code to include my specific hardware (oh 
yes, it's already 5 years old, it's being sold in every hardware shop, 
but still it's not in the linux kernel).


P.S. Proper answer from Linux team would be "We accept patches!" :-).

WBR,
Aleksey.