Novell Delivers Device Driver Breakthrough

An anonymous reader writes "Novell today announced a new Linux device driver process to make it easier for third party device driver writers to integrate their drivers with SUSE Linux." From the article: "The new driver process allows customers to obtain drivers independently of Novell® kernel updates and supplies a straightforward approach third parties can use when developing device drivers for Novell's SUSE® Linux Enterprise products. The new Linux driver process developed by Novell allows hardware and software vendors to provide Linux drivers and driver updates for their products to customers directly and transparently, in a way that is completely integrated with SUSE Linux Enterprise delivery and support."

Re:Marketing blurb

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Ah, never mind. This looks basically like an "apt-get upgrade" for drivers [novell.com], rather than some new ABI.

ok...

[reynaert]

This is only going to work if you're using SuSE. And if you don't compile your own kernel. It only gives vendors an excuse to call their shitty binary-only drivers "Linux support". I'd call this thing a Linux driver setback.

Novell invents email?

[khasim]

So, YaST now has the ability to include ISV repositories ... and Novell will tell people who sign up with them when the interface changes?

Sorry, but I'm not seeing the "breakthrough" here.

Re:Wireless drivers

[gr8_phk]

"Does this mean that I might be able to get wireless working without ndiswrapper in the near future?"

Buy hardware that is supported. Yes it's a pain to do the research, but it's worth it. I have a Shuttle XPC and wanted to install their wireless add-on that doesn't require a PCI slot. I worried about drivers until I found that it uses the ZD1211 chip for which ZyDas provides an open source Linux driver. Then I learned that there is a sourceforge project to rewrite the driver so it's suitable for integration into the mainline kernels - 64bit included. They plan to get into 2.6.17 or 18 kernels, so wireless may well work out of the box when I upgrade to Fedora 6 in the fall. For now it's possible to make it work the hard way (download/compile) without ndiswrapper.

There are other cards with this chip and there are other chips with native Linux drivers in various states. The future looks good.

So enabling YasT to handle kernel modules...

[mr_mischief]

So enabling YasT to handle kernel modules... is now a breakthrough.

I mean, all this appears to be is distribution of precompiled kernel modules being handled by the package manager. This is not a good thing, let alone a huge advance.

How about a package manager that downloads the code, lets you inspect, customize, or debug it, then compiles it and adds it to your modules list once you approve it?

Failure of computing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's get philosophical. Why does this problem exist? Has it ever occured to any of you that device drivers are themselves a complete throwback and an obomination in the 21st Century? We take them for granted, but there is no good reason whatsoever for a computer peripheral to use "device drivers". None.

If you can't design a piece of hardware that works through an existing standardised interface you're no kind of engineer at all. And take your pick.. firewire, USB, RS232, SCSI...

Do you suppose every video display, digital camera, audio converter and so on is somehow uniquely special, that it is so ground breaking in its design that it needs custom crafted code just to make it work?

We are so entrenched in our legacy thinking that nobody, not even smart developers ever ask themselves the obvious paradigm breaking question, why the hell should you need a device driver? The reason is no more than a gross failure of modern computing, a failure of standardisation, a failure of coordination and regulation. It is a failure of ourselves as users and customers to demand a higher standard of compatibility. It is a failure of us as developers and coders to solve a simple problem once and move on.

Before you answer with some circular reasoning that merely begs the question take five and think it through. I speak as a software and hardware engineer who has designed and built entire computer systems and written an operating system.

Re:Marketing blurb

[LnxAddct]

What about signing the packages? I like having my packages signed by my "vendor", not a bunch of 3rd parties. If my vendor signs it, it implies that they've ran it and tested it(at least I hope so). It also stops me from having to import a whole bunch of gpg keys, etc... Where is the quality control in all of this?
Regards,
Steve

Re:Breakthrough?

[ewhac]

Sad thing is, this probably isn't a troll. You sound like most of the kernel developers who refuse to make a stable API or ABI.

It's not a question of "refusing." The issue is that they know they're not done yet.

The kernel API is a moving target because the technology -- and knowledge behind it -- is growing and evolving. One of the more perfect examples of this evolution is Linux power management. The first released API consisted essentially of suspend() and resume(). Even back in the days of APM, this may have seemed adequate, but it really wasn't. This inadequacy was driven home when ACPI happened (ugh!), and the shortcomings of suspend() and resume() became obvious. So the kernel API was changed to try and encompass it.

Whoops! It turns out that, aside from being incomprehensibly baroque, ACPI is absolutely useless when trying to address power management issues on, say, embedded systems where power and clock throttling controls are far richer and more complex. So the API is being spun again, and this time they're trying to get something more future-proof.

Besides, your complaint is specious to begin with. Microsoft has changed its device driver API at least three times in the Windows era (and probably far more in the DOS era). This didn't stop HW manufacturers from supporting it. What it did stop was old peripherals moving forward on to shiny new HW platforms. That old joystick you loved from the company that died just before Windows 98 came out? Too bad, you have to throw it away now; there's no WDM driver for it, and there certainly won't be a Vista driver for it. Oh, hmm. Looks like someone made the necessary changes to the Linux driver source so that it'll compile under 2.6.16.

It sounds like what you're really saying is that Linux is too small a market to bother with, rather than there being any intrinsic issue with publishing driver source. If the market shares of Windows and Linux were swapped, the source code issue wouldn't be; it would just be treated as part of the landscape.

Schwab

Linux "Device Driver" pains

[BeforeCoffee]

Ok, I like Linux. In fact, I'd love to write software for it since, as a developer who leverages open source libraries, I feel like Microsoft has told me I'm no longer welcome.

So when I saw CentOS, I figured it was time to make the switch. It offered everything I needed. I went to fry's and bought the hardware for my new app server which included a cheapy HighPoint 1640 RAID card so I could setup a RAID 1 system. It said it supported Linux, so I figured I was good.

Well I wasn't good. There was source code for an open source driver from HighPoint. But trying to figure out how to package and build the thing was amazingly arcane and retarded! I HAD to install a floppy disk for godssakes. The experience of trying to bootstrap and get the damned open source drivers built for the thing was a long trip through the fiery pits. Equally evil was trying to figure out how to patch a new kernel with recompiled drivers whenever yum got me a new one. What a pain!

I'm a developer not a sysadmin. The fact that I figured out how to make my RAID card work with Linux was not a satisfying experience to me, it was frustrating and it was a waste of tens of hours over many months. You geeks who like to build kernels and fiddle with make files have at it. It's just not my thing.

In fact, I think there is no such thing as Linux device drivers ... what there is is not abstract enough to be graced with that name. Module maybe fits. C'mon you geeks, seriously, what's the holdup here? What is the big problem with having a driver binary that just works across all minor revisions of a major version of a Linux kernel? That would be a HUGE plus for me.

Whatever the case, the other poster who said it's not 1992 anymore had it right - we need some more slickness around drivers if we are going to win. And since I'm planning on not upgrading to the next version of windows, I would prefer we start winning on the desktop real quick.

Dave

How is it good?

[shutdown -p now]

Simple: when your parents/friend/gf asks you about "that Linux thingy" that you use on your desktop, you can burn a SuSE DVD for them and know that their hardware will work with minimal effort on their part. Myself, I'll keep my Debian where I can tweak things to my heart's content. Everyone wins.

Does this mean Linux will work?

[Warg! The Orcs!!]

I am not trolling. I am one of the many, many PC users that are not code monkeys. I use Windows because (for me) it 'works'. By 'works' I mean that my PC does what I want it to do 99.99% of the time. I have however an older laptop (It's a Haus laptop: Pentium 2, 1.4Ghz, 256MB RAM, 20GB Hard disk - Haus were an own-brand badging for the former jungle.com now owned by Argos) on to which I have installed Mandriva. The experience has been interesting. I can do all sorts of OSS stuff like play OSS games and type up OSS documents and so on. The fun stops, however, when I want to anything that an ordinary PC user might want to do. I cannot surf the web because there are no Linux drivers for my Netgear or Belkin wireless cards. I cannot send or receive email because of the same reason. I cannot download new software because of the same reason. I cannot print anything because I do not have a linux driver for my printer (Lexmark X1170 - if you know of one let me know).All this means is that my Linux laptop is a mere curiosity and not a powerhouse driven by cutting edge OSS technology

Could the people who know all about APIs, ABIs and Microkernels and so on PLEASE stop bickering and just write some drivers.

Open Source of course.

Re:Marketing blurb

[dmurphy_58]

Back in the early 90's Novell was able to run their Lan drivers under any 32-bit OS, Windows ( 3.1, 95/98, NT, XP), Os/2, NetWare and UNIX (transmogeifier) (see UNIXWare). Given an appropriately closely tied abstraction layer to the hardware, its possible to have appropriate layers to interface to different OS, smp or uni-p. Wonder if they have taken this a step further with the System Abstration Layer (SAL) developed for their Directory Services.