Wine device drivers proposal

[Damjan Jovanovic]

--- Kuba Ober <kuba at mareimbrium.org> wrote:
> > > I've been trying to add STI (still image)
> support to
> > > Wine, and I've made some progress. However, I
> see a
> > > deep and unsurmountable need to add (at least
> > > user-space) device drivers to Wine, and I would
> like
> > > some feedback on these ideas.
> >
> > Drivers belong in the kernel.
> 
> Not necessarily. In fact, only the part that
> directly touches the hardware 
> really belongs there. There's nothing wrong with
> doing rest of the processing 
> (i.e. the non time-critical parts) in the userspace.
> In fact, that likely 
> makes the kernel a safer place.
> 
> > If there's no Linux driver for a device, 
> > then Wine cannot support it.
> 
> That would be stupid.
> 
> > In that case, the first step is to write a 
> >   Linux device driver for it, which has the added
> advantage that other
> > native linux applications can use the hardware.
> 
> Huh? What about sane? It can e.g. use libusb quite
> nicely and *portably* to 
> say access usb scanners. I.e. it flies on both
> windows *and* linux.
> 
> > You can't load a Windows driver that accesses
> hardware in Wine, as Wine
> > is a user-space application with no I/O
> privileges.
> 
> You could, with help of a special kernel driver to
> forward the requests 
> between hardware and userspace. libusb and usbfs do
> that already for usb, 
> i.e. at the current point in time wine can be able
> to natively support any 
> usb device minidriver that doesn't use a class
> driver. Class drivers can be 
> easily developed by snatching code from linux
> kernel, as long as licenses are 
> fine of course. All that without touching the kernel
> in any way. And I mean 
> here full support for *any* usb device, rain or
> shine. Network adapters 
> (visible in wine only, but so what?), scanners,
> cheap webcams whose 
> manufacturers don't care enough to release the
> specs, and the list goes on.
> 
> Cheers, Kuba
> 

I agree, Kuba.

Which of the approaches I suggested (or any new ones)
do you propose?

Bye
Damjan


		
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