On Sat, 28 Aug 2004, Nikhil Joshi spake thusly:
- Please have some kernel intercompatibility in relation to device
drivers so that drivers written for older kernels work on new ones too. I read in the recent LFY mag that internal modem drivers written for older kernels cannot work on newer ones. Linus Tarvolds could do something about this?
Exactly as I mentioned above. This is a major and understandable concern for hardware vendors and System Administrators. Kernel compilation is *a long task* on an i586/i686 + 32/64 MB RAM. Take into account some 20-25 PC's in a SOHO setup having slight nuances of their own ( some are P1's some P3's .. some have sound cards .. etc..) and the driver installation for new devices will be a *major task*
This is not strictly as big an issue as you think. Compile a kernel for the lowest processor and with all the hardware drivers available as modules. You will need to do this only once. You can use it everywhere. You can even build a rpm package of all this using the kernel makefile itself.