You can't completely detach drivers from the kernel, not on windows, not on Linux. Its why developing drivers is "special" compared to developing applications.
On both systems USB can use a generic kernel driver to load "firmware" on device insertion to run the device.
I've a fair collection of hardware that worked on previous versions of windows that do not have drivers for newer versions.
On Linux it if ever worked on an earlier version, its still working on the newest.
Ubuntu integrates binary drivers pretty painlessly. I'm using the Nvidia binary drivers, I tried the open source ones first but performance was not quite good enough, the closed source drivers, while not my first choice politically, deliver performance Linux pragmatically accepts.
Linux discourages binary drivers as bugs in the drivers usually get blamed on the kernel. But since the kernel developers don't have source for the binary drivers, they can't help fix them, so its a real annoyance.
Discussion on:
Message 13 of 1
IBM Sponsored Resources
Resources from our Sponsor
- Oracle Exadata vs IBM: Netezza Compared
- Forrester TEI Report
- CIA Whitepaper
- Harnessing the Power of Advanced Analytics
- Tapping into Unleashed Business Potential with Advanced Analytics
- Unlock Analytic Performance with Revolution R for Enterprise and IBM: Netezza Data Warehouse Appliance
The best of ZDNet, delivered
ZDNet Newsletters
Get the best of ZDNet delivered straight to your inbox
