If you’ve ever run the Linux operating system on a computer than you may agree with may Linux users when it comes to the lack of device drivers for it. Many devices work with Linux however there are some that won’t work at all while others will only work sometimes. This can obviously cause many problems for Linux users and just be all around annoying for someone who wants reliability.

You may have heard from a blog or email that Greg Kroah-Hartman, who’s a kernel hacker, stated that the Linux kernel community was going to offer companies free driver development for the Linux operating system. This move was supposed to help create more device drivers for Linux by giving companies an incentive to release their application programming interfaces (API) and their application binary interfaces (ABI).

While this was a noble move, not many companies jumped on the ball right away. The problem is that not many companies want to release their APIs and ABIs for open source development. For the most part it’s because companies don’t want to have device drivers out there that they haven’t created. The problem is that many companies don’t have the extra money or manpower to create drivers for off-stream operating systems such as Linux.

The goal is to let venders have a hand in the creation of the device drivers without them having to pay for it. If venders come out and agree to allow people to help them create drivers for Linux then Linux might experience more success than they ever have. While there’s no definite answer as to when or if venders will allow this to happen it’s a very strong possibility with the growing number of Linux users and the increasing demand for stable device drivers. If venders do decide to do this hopefully it’s soon.

Source: Cioinsight