Curt wrote: > On 2020-01-08, Dan Ritter <d...@randomstring.org> wrote: > >> > >> I consider natively to denote a device (in this case) that works without > >> the requirement of any software emulation to lead it to believe it is > >> functioning on a OS different from the host OS. > > > > That's a pretty odd interpretation: very few physical devices > > have any knowledge of the operating system that they are hooked > > to, and just want to be addresses according to a given protocol. > > I guess it probably is a very strange interpretation, but I can find no > other interpretation of the word "natively" in computerese. If what > you're saying is true, I suppose the term should not be applied to a > hardware device at all (which was kind of my entire point from the very > start). > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_(computing)
Descriptivism wins over prescriptivism. In this case, go over to kernel.org and search for "native". > This option sets some parameters for the Atari native SCSI > driver. > The reason for this breakup is to be able to easily reuse the > hardware-glue to write drivers for other OSes; note the hardware > glue part is written as a native Linux driver; no abstraction > layers are used, so to port to another OS, the Linux kernel API > calls should be replaced with the target OS's. > On Linux, Coherent Accelerator (CXL) kernel services present > CAPI devices as a PCI device by implementing a virtual PCI host > bridge. This abstraction simplifies the infrastructure and > programming model, allowing for drivers to look similar to other > native PCI device drivers. > The following PCI drivers support the joystick natively. > The following drivers don't support gameport natively, but > there are additional modules. Load the corresponding module to > add the gameport support. > For example, if the PCI Express Root Port native hotplug service > driver is loaded first, it claims a PCI-PCI Bridge Root Port. > Once the V4L2 sub-device is registered by the driver which > created the Media controller device, the sub-device node acts > just as a node of a native V4L2 flash API device would. So, natively means: 1. in the same way as a device is expecting things to happen 2. in the same way as other similar things [kernel drivers] work 3. in the same way as an application is expecting things to work 4. in the most well-supported case All of these are human descriptions of an underlying idea: that two things are working together in a way which one or both of them is not making any special accomodations to achieve. That's what "natively" means. So I contend that in the context of a device that requires some support from the operating system, "works natively" means that you can expect the Linux kernel to work with it without requiring a special accomodation, like an emulator or a driver that taints the kernel. -dsr-
