From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Dec 17 18:47:47 2000 From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Dec 17 18:47:45 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from hurlame.pdl.cs.cmu.edu (HURLAME.PDL.CS.CMU.EDU [128.2.189.78]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68A2137B400 for ; Sun, 17 Dec 2000 18:47:44 -0800 (PST) Received: (from magus@localhost) by hurlame.pdl.cs.cmu.edu (8.11.1/8.11.1) id eBI2lRK19368; Sun, 17 Dec 2000 21:47:27 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from magus) Sender: magus@hurlame.pdl.cs.cmu.edu To: Devin Butterfield Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Writing Device Drivers References: <3A3D513B.52737F48@wireless.net> From: Nat Lanza Date: 17 Dec 2000 21:47:27 -0500 In-Reply-To: Devin Butterfield's message of "Sun, 17 Dec 2000 15:50:19 -0800" Message-ID: Lines: 22 User-Agent: Gnus/5.0807 (Gnus v5.8.7) XEmacs/21.1 (Channel Islands) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Devin Butterfield writes: > This is IMHO one of the advantages linux has over FreeBSD. You can run > by your local Barnes & Noble bookstore and pick up a copy of "Linux > Device Drivers" and start writing code that you actually understand. It's less of an advantage than you might think. Kernel internals are moving targets, especially in the Linux world, and it doesn't take very much time for a book to become outdated. For example, when I started writing drivers for Linux 2.2, all I could find was books that covered 2.0 and early versions of 2.1. Nothing documented the current kernel, and because of the drastic changes between versions, much of the documentation for 2.0 was misleading. --nat -- nat lanza --------------------- research programmer, parallel data lab, cmu scs magus@cs.cmu.edu -------------------------------- http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~magus/ there are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths -- alfred north whitehead To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message