On 09/26/13 05:02 PM, Garrett D'Amore wrote:
On Sep 26, 2013, at 6:59 AM, DavidHalko <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
An attempt at migration of capability before EOF seems to be
reasonable planning.
That would be true *if* we knew of any active use of them. I don't.
I see one of the strengths of Illumos of supporting legacy hardware with
legacy drivers,
most like Linux can support all older hardware, that was once
contemporary, that some other platforms ditched supporting long time ago.
While taking the most out of old hardware is nothing wrong, and one of
the strength of the platform, it is hard to choose what not to support
anymore.
But, if those classes of drivers and their kernel support for it, make
some trouble building, maintaining or something, then no one can blame
nor actually stop developers from ditching it.
Q: I would like to know how high quality would then be reservation of an
such old kernel code (where would it reside in some illumos repository,
once removed) and how hard would be for someone wanting suddenly in a
modern illumos kernel, to add support to the kernel for that class of
devices (PC Card, 16 bit PCMCIA), if he/she want for it's hardware?
Would it be impossible to add it or one would be needing to use older
illumos and not using newer illumos to make them work?
Or it could be done in such a way that "legacy kernel interfaces" could
be extracted and made available together with removed driver class
support in a way that they could be easily added if needed in later
brand new illumos?
Personally, I have IDE over PC Card, Fax/Modem together with LAN and
Wireess Lan card, lying around, not actually using it.
I have PC Card slot in a latop (32bit I suppose), that I actually did
not use, since I think my PC Card slot is broken or something.
I would like to point out, that in the line of Laptops sold around here
at shops,
there were evident sharp decline of a number of laptop models that used
to provide even PCI ExpressCard in various sizes. They (importers) just
at once stopped offering widely laptops with these external expansion
options.
There were wide range of laptops with these slots several years ago
(some with PCCard, some with ExpressCard, but now (last 4-5years) it is
very hard to find consumer grade laptops that come with it.
I would for now actually dislike to see that ExpressCard support
disappear since it is actually still contemporary way of adding external
high speed devices (external graphics etc).
(Someone talking about adding Thunderbolt (2) and USB3 support?)
Related to that, About Smart Card readers, I would be strongly against
ditching Smart card reader drivers, like Solaris11 ditched them (I know
they are not related with PCCard/PCMCIA and that they differ). Smart
cards are used on modern credit cards, personal ID cards and e-banking
cards for identification, containing signing certificates and for
network identification while logging in.
I would not like for that support for Smart Card to go away any time
soon from illumos. We need that in any application of illumos
desktop/headless implementation for identification in foreseeable future.
How hard it is to have older stuff supported anyway - Does it make much
trouble?
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