UNIX admin schrieb:
Hell, it's been years and years and Linux still doesn't have full backing of
all the vendors out there like Windows has; actually, the vendors' Linux driver
support has been spotty at best.
The difference to Linux is Solaris' binary compatibility garantee. For
the vendor this means:
- Write your driver once (against the DDK/DDI)
- Release as proprietary as desired (no worries about possible license
conflicts)
- Still have it work 3 months from now (3 years, even - as long as you
stay on the same architecture, of course)
For Linux, driver development either meant giving up control by pushing
things into the official tree, or constant maintenance work: Either, if
you release the source, because you have to adapt it all the time to
changing interfaces, or worse, if you can|want only release binaries,
you have to provide them for each and every kernel version of the
distributions you think are important enough - and leave all those
behind who compile the kernel themselves for whatever reason.
("Option 3", releasing a binary blob with a source wrapper, like nvidia
does, reduces the load at your side a bit, at the downside of requiring
kernel headers + compiler at your client's side)
If I said it once, I said it a million times: Sun Microsystems will have to
invest some *serious* cash to get the Solaris driver support going. That will
create a positive upward spiral, just like it did with Windows.
That's probably still true, independent from the above - money can't
hurt the driver situation at the current point.
Regards,
Patrick Georgi
_______________________________________________
opensolaris-discuss mailing list
opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
