Hello All,
A few days ago I got a chance to get my hands on an IBM server machine for linux experimentation. It was at my friend's workshop and he wanted to load RedHat. As I had RHEL 3 WS, I loaded it with 'All' as the packages option. Unfortunately it did not detect the network card. The IBM driver cds contained linux source drivers that needed to be compiled. I did as per the instructions in the cd's readme file. however the make, make install happened but the final instructions were not clear and the process was a waste of a few hours.
The reason for writing this mail is not to find out what went wrong but to suggest to the kernel writers that just like the Windows OS, Linux too could have a streamlined and simple method of installing device drivers.
In Windows, there are 2 methods. 1) An executable file that is run and it does the entire pprocess of installing the driver files. 2) A set of ini and other files in a folder. The device manager or new device installation wizard asks for the location of the driver files and one has to simply point to the folderthat contains the driver files.
Now Linux has evolved from a complicated command line system into a full scale gui system with easyto use interfaces that reduce installation time and effort. So it should not be difficult for kernel writers to incorporate a standard interface that automatically loads device drivers from source file folders ( the ones that are .tar.gz ). The other opption is to create rpm or deb files that will do the entire installation, but that will be too system specific and with too many distros, it may be difficult. The first option will allow the system to automatically create relavent driver files from the source files.
Regards,
Rony.
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