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 Device drivers are a key issue for the diffusion of the Linux operating system, especially in the Desktop market segment. The Linux Driver Project aims at creating device drivers to be included in Linux kernel with the cooperation of hardware manufacturers. The project has started one year ago and nowadays, it enrolls more than 300 programmers. All the drivers produced by this project are (and will be) released with an OSI compliant license (GPL v 2.0).
The project website is a good point to now wether your hardware has a kernel module which can support it or not and, in the latter case, whether there is somebody working on it or no. Inside the project website there are two lists: one containing all the device drivers already implemented in the Linux kernel and the other one containing all the drivers that are to be implemented. Finally the project statistics indicate the current state of the art of the development on a specific driver.
Considering that this project aims at involving hardware manufacturer on the realization of Linux device drivers, it is worthwhile of attention and diffusion. A large number of available device drivers for Linux have been created using a reverse engineering approach, due to the lack of hardware specifications from the hardware manufacturer, usually with huge programmers efforts. On the other side, many hardware munfacturers do not provide Linux device drivers because they just do not want to sustain the cost of the development. This project is then a good contact point from these two opposites as it may give hardware manufacturers skilled programmers who, with the hardware specification provided by the manufacturers, can code the device driver for the Linux kernel. The hardware manufacturer will have its hardware supported on the Linux platform, and the Linux community will have a new piece of hardware to use with its Linux boxes. |
