On Thu, Mar 05, 2015 at 09:22:51PM +0000, Alexey Suslikov wrote: > T. Jameson Little <beatgammit <at> gmail.com> writes: > > Well, I'm much more capable of fixing existing drivers to make it work > > well than building something from scratch, and I imagine the same is > > true for many developers, because you work on whatever affects you. > > IMO, "fixing existing drivers" should take popularity into account. > > I asked sthen@ some time ago (in early 2013) about 802.11 drivers > usage (according to dmesg logs), and he replied: > > we already have information about chips from dmesglog. since may 2009: > > 2 an > 2 malo > 2 urtwn > 4 atu > 4 zyd > 7 acx > 7 otus > 7 ural > 13 rsu > 13 uath > 16 ipw > 33 wi > 43 iwi > 44 run > 50 rum > 67 bwi > 105 urtw > 107 ral > 114 wpi > 171 ath > 199 athn > 547 iwn > > (end of quote). > > So, IMO, "fixing" Intel's drivers maybe be kinda preferred way to go > because of higher usage and better quality/documentation.
This list doesn't count unsupported devices. It is skewed towards built-in devices, e.g. urtwn is quite common but it is at the bottom of this list. I think these numbers just mean that most laptop installs happen on thinkpads. People working in their free time tend to work on what they want to work on, not what other people would like them to work on.
