From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu From: "Thomas Bushnell, BSG" Message-ID: <877kscww8d.fsf@becket.becket.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii References: <20011126175643.1EC1F199D7@mail.cse.psu.edu>, <200111261848.NAA11804@augusta.math.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] OT: linux complexity trends Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 10:16:31 +0000 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 2b264c9e-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 cross@math.psu.edu (Dan Cross) writes: > I guess I'm having a hard time understanding the point. Memory being > as cheap as it is [*], why not just keep the drivers loaded all the time? > Is this to avoid inter-driver conflicts or to better support PCMCIA > devices or something? The usual reason for dynamically loadable device drivers is for: Systems with easily pluggable hardware (USB, PCMCIA) Systems where it's beneficial to run one kernel for a bunch of machines with divergent hardware. Such systems need all the drivers available, in principle, all the time, but only a minority will be needed at any one point in time. If all the supported hardware drivers are loaded at once, you do get considerable bloat. There are a *lot* of hardware devices out there; a kernel with device drivers compiled in for all of them would be insanely huge.