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Greg KH | 4 Jun 2009 22:09
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Linux Driver Project Status Report as of June 2009


Linux Driver Project Status Report as of June 2009

The Linux Driver Project (LDP) is now over two years old.  It sprang up
out of the complaints from some users and companies that there was a
real "Linux driver problem".  The perception was that Linux did not have
good driver support, and that closed source drivers were potentially
taking over some device types.

It turns out, that almost all hardware is currently already supported on
Linux, with almost all major vendors shipping Linux drivers.

So last year, I proposed the following goals:
  1) Continue to write new drivers for any company that wishes to have
     them developed.  These drivers are all to be released under the
     GPLv2 and included in the main Linux kernel source tree hosted at
     kernel.org.  Future maintenance of these drivers will be done either
     by members of the original company, or by the community members,
     depending on the wishes of the company.
  2) Continue to be a focal point for companies to learn about the Linux
     development process and become part of the kernel community if they
     wish to.  I hope to enlist more people to help out with this
     process, but if not, my airline miles logged will continue to
     increase.
  3) Work more in an open development manner, hosting all experimental
     and development code in a public git tree, getting daily testing in
     the linux-next tree on all architectures.

Goal one (write drivers) has been very successful.  Myself and many
other members of the LDP have written new drivers for a wide range of
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Greg KH | 4 Jun 2009 23:55
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How to run this (was Re: Linux Driver Project Status Report as of June 2009)

On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 01:09:59PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> Goal one (write drivers) has been very successful.  Myself and many
> other members of the LDP have written new drivers for a wide range of
> different hardware devices, and gotten them merged into the main kernel
> tree.  Several more are currently under development and we are averaging
> about 2 querys a month for different drivers from different companies.
> 
> This work will continue to happen in the following year, as everyone
> involved seems to be happy with it.  However, there will be a few
> procedural changes in how this is working, to help resolve some of the
> issues that have occurred.  For more details about this, see the
> discussion on the LDP development mailing list.

So, let's talk about the process of working on new drivers here.  It's
been probably over a year since I last posted requests for developers to
the public list, and that I firmly my fault.  I have been fufilling
developer requests usually by just contacting people on the list who I
know have experience in specific domains, or by doing the work myself.

This isn't very fair to the larger developer base here, and I apologize.

How do we fix this?  I'll now promise to push developer requests to the
list in a much more timely fashion, and I have a few already that I will
send out after this thread.

But note, the majority of requests that I've been getting over the past
year has been "add this driver that we wrote out-of-tree" into the
kernel.  That has happened through the creation of the staging tree, and
given that we have over 40 different drivers in that tree right now, has
been a very big success.  Those kinds of requests I can handle myself,
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Greg KH | 4 Jun 2009 23:57
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USB tablet driver request

New request:

 USB Tablet driver.  The device is HID-like, with some "magic" commands
 needed.  I have 2 of the devices, and can ship them anywhere in the
 world, and we also have specs for what needs to be done.

 Note that this is a bit complex, and someone who knows the Input/HID
 layer would be best, as I have spent a bit of time with this device,
 and couldn't get it working properly very easily.  I also showed it to
 some xorg developers and they were confused as well.

Anyone want to work on this?

thanks,

greg k-h
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Greg KH | 4 Jun 2009 23:58
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SCSI driver request

New request:

 SCSI driver for a "high-speed" scsi controller, with I think,
 solid-state storage on the device.

 We can get specs, and no NDA is required, but knowledge of the SCSI
 layer is needed.  The device is supposed to follow the
 "SAM3r14/SBC2r16/SPC3r23 standards" so if you know what that means,
 that's a great first step.

This might take more than one developer, I'm not quite sure.

Anyone want to work on this?

thanks,

greg k-h
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Greg KH | 5 Jun 2009 00:02
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DisplayLink USB video driver request

New request:

 DisplayLink has recently released an opensource library, libdlo, to
 drive their USB video devices.  Because of this, we now have a
 in-kernel framebuffer driver that landed in the staging tree yesterday,
 and you can run xorg on top of it.

 I have some spare devices for people who want to help out make this
 work properly with "real" xorg.  That will probably mean changing Intel
 and ATI drivers to treat the DisplayLink device as a new monitor, so
 that we can move windows back and forth across monitors, and docking
 stations will work "properly".

 This is going to take someone who knows xorg, but there will also be a
 kernel portion needed as well.

This might take more than one developer, I'm not quite sure.

Anyone want to work on this?

thanks,

greg k-h
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Felipe Balbi | 5 Jun 2009 07:46
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USB tablet driver request

Hi Greg,

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 12:57 AM, Greg KH<greg at kroah.com> wrote:
> New request:
>
> ?USB Tablet driver. ?The device is HID-like, with some "magic" commands
> ?needed. ?I have 2 of the devices, and can ship them anywhere in the
> ?world, and we also have specs for what needs to be done.
>
> ?Note that this is a bit complex, and someone who knows the Input/HID
> ?layer would be best, as I have spent a bit of time with this device,
> ?and couldn't get it working properly very easily. ?I also showed it to
> ?some xorg developers and they were confused as well.
>
> Anyone want to work on this?

I'd be really interested but could I take a look at the documentation
beforehand ? Also, what's the schedule for getting that done ?

thanks,

balbi
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Felipe Balbi | 5 Jun 2009 08:00
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How to run this (was Re: Linux Driver Project Status Report as of June 2009)

Hi,

First of all congratulations for the great results of LDP so far.

On Fri, Jun 5, 2009 at 12:55 AM, Greg KH<greg at kroah.com> wrote:
> So, let's talk about the process of working on new drivers here. ?It's
> been probably over a year since I last posted requests for developers to
> the public list, and that I firmly my fault. ?I have been fufilling
> developer requests usually by just contacting people on the list who I
> know have experience in specific domains, or by doing the work myself.
>
> This isn't very fair to the larger developer base here, and I apologize.
>
> How do we fix this? ?I'll now promise to push developer requests to the
> list in a much more timely fashion, and I have a few already that I will
> send out after this thread.

Yeah, that's nice. More people would have the possibility to work and/or learn
the process.

> But note, the majority of requests that I've been getting over the past
> year has been "add this driver that we wrote out-of-tree" into the
> kernel. ?That has happened through the creation of the staging tree, and
> given that we have over 40 different drivers in that tree right now, has
> been a very big success. ?Those kinds of requests I can handle myself,
> as they are just merge issue. ?But when they happen, I will CC: this
> developer list with the patches, so that people can jump on them if they
> wish to.

sounds good to me and very 'linux friendly'. If the driver is there and is
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Leon Woestenberg | 5 Jun 2009 11:47
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How to run this (was Re: Linux Driver Project Status Report as of June 2009)

Greg et al,

On Thu, Jun 4, 2009 at 11:55 PM, Greg KH<greg at kroah.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 01:09:59PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
>> Goal one (write drivers) has been very successful. ?Myself and many
>> other members of the LDP have written new drivers for a wide range of
>> different hardware devices, and gotten them merged into the main kernel
>> tree. ?Several more are currently under development and we are averaging
>> about 2 querys a month for different drivers from different companies.
>>
>  <...>
> Advanced Tasks:
> ?Write a new driver from scratch, or modify an existing driver for new
> ?hardware.
>
IMO:

Most (out-of-tree) device driver authors are not (at all, or not
deeply) involved with programming the kernel.

There is a gap between the kernel developers and the (occasional)
device driver programmer, who usually has to add Linux support for one
or a handful of devices.

When I joined the Linux (Device) Driver Project, I would have expected
more sharing of knowledge/tips/reviews on device driver programming;
i.e. starting off where LDD3 ends and getting real-world stuff in
working order into the upstream kernel.

 I've been posting questions here and there (LKML) and sometimes I get
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Mithlesh Thukral | 5 Jun 2009 12:00
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How to run this (was Re: Linux Driver Project Status Report as of June 2009)

On Friday 05 June 2009 03:25:06 Greg KH wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 01:09:59PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
> > Goal one (write drivers) has been very successful.  Myself and many
> > other members of the LDP have written new drivers for a wide range of
> > different hardware devices, and gotten them merged into the main kernel
> > tree.  Several more are currently under development and we are averaging
> > about 2 querys a month for different drivers from different companies.
> >
> > This work will continue to happen in the following year, as everyone
> > involved seems to be happy with it.  However, there will be a few
> > procedural changes in how this is working, to help resolve some of the
> > issues that have occurred.  For more details about this, see the
> > discussion on the LDP development mailing list.
>
> So, let's talk about the process of working on new drivers here.  It's
> been probably over a year since I last posted requests for developers to
> the public list, and that I firmly my fault.  I have been fufilling
> developer requests usually by just contacting people on the list who I
> know have experience in specific domains, or by doing the work myself.
>
> This isn't very fair to the larger developer base here, and I apologize.
>
> How do we fix this?  I'll now promise to push developer requests to the
> list in a much more timely fashion, and I have a few already that I will
> send out after this thread.
>
> But note, the majority of requests that I've been getting over the past
> year has been "add this driver that we wrote out-of-tree" into the
> kernel.  That has happened through the creation of the staging tree, and
> given that we have over 40 different drivers in that tree right now, has
(Continue reading)

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Ming Lei | 5 Jun 2009 16:55
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SCSI driver request

2009/6/5 Greg KH <greg at kroah.com>:
> New request:
>
> ?SCSI driver for a "high-speed" scsi controller, with I think,
> ?solid-state storage on the device.

>
> ?We can get specs, and no NDA is required, but knowledge of the SCSI
> ?layer is needed. ?The device is supposed to follow the
> ?"SAM3r14/SBC2r16/SPC3r23 standards" so if you know what that means,
> ?that's a great first step.

I have some SCSI knowledge, and I have interests in developing the driver,
but I don't know how the SCSI controller is connected to system bus, if
by PCI/PCIE interface, I think it is not a problem for me since I only have
plain x86 box.

Another thing, Can I buy the controller easily and inexpensively from market?

Thanks.

--

-- 
Lei Ming
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