linux-kernel - Re: Exposing device ids and driver names

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Date:	Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:23:44 +0200
From:	Stefan Richter <stefanr@...6.in-berlin.de>
To:	Nathaniel McCallum <nathaniel@...emccallum.com>
CC:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, greg@...ah.com
Subject: Re: Exposing device ids and driver names

Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
> On 10/01/2009 01:47 PM, Stefan Richter wrote:
>> Nathaniel McCallum wrote:
[...]
>>> The second tool, related to the first, is a program which runs on
>>> Windows and scans for a user's hardware and tells them which distro will
>>> best support their hardware.
[...]
>> Hardware support also depends on userland:  Udev rules, libraries,
>> application programs.
>>
>> Even if you ignore that for now and only look at the kernel part of
>> hardware support:  Beyond "doesn't have a matching driver" and "does
>> have", there is a large and impossible to track grey area of "has a
>> poorly working driver" and "has a perfectly working driver".

There are even more factors for how well something works or even whether
it works at all:  It may even depend on combinations of two pieces of
hardware, e.g. bus adapter and device on that bus.  It may depend on
device firmware revisions.

> Yes, I'm aware of this and will account for it as best as I am able.
[...]
> you are correct that we cannot predict 100% of user
> experience.  But 70% is a huge improvement over 0%.

So, this 2nd tool can't literally say which distribution supports a
device best.  It can mostly just list which distributions contain a
matching kernel driver.
-- 
Stefan Richter
-=====-==--= =-=- ----=
http://arcgraph.de/sr/
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