On Mon, Sep 26, 2011 at 9:05 PM, Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwa...@gmail.com> wrote: <SNIP> >> Contribute your drivers upstream. When the devs change an API, they'll >> update your code for you. > > That sounds good, but in practice it doesn't work. > > 1) The kernel developers don't support any existing customers. Bugs > are only fixed for customers who are willing to run the next > kernel verison. I've got customers that are still running 2.4 > kernels. 2.6.18 is still widely used. Will the kernel developers > add new features, support for new hardware, or fix bugs for those > customers. Not a chance. >
Grant, Check out the Long Term Stable family of kernels. It's a bit hard right now due to the status of the kernel web site being down/changing. However you can see here at Andi Kleen's blog that he's interested in participation: http://halobates.de/blog/p/38 I know from watching the lkml list over the years that updates to long term stable kernels come out periodically and do include fixes. I don't know about new drivers, but reading Andi's blog it seems he's potentially open to receiving driver updates from folks interested in having the driver included. Hope this helps, Mark
