Add-on drivers (Re: Installing a compiler by default)

Matt Zimmerman mdz at ubuntu.com
Tue Jun 13 22:58:38 BST 2006


(this belongs on ubuntu-devel; I'm CCing you in case you aren't subscribed)

On Tue, Jun 13, 2006 at 09:53:29PM +0200, Jan Claeys wrote:
> Op di, 13-06-2006 te 12:13 -0700, schreef Matt Zimmerman:
> > We can't add new drivers to the discs users receive through shipit or
> > Amazon.com.
> 
> But of course the same is true for the source tarballs that people have
> to find & compile themselves...

I guess I didn't understand your proposal clearly; can you restate it?

> > but in practice it is quite a lot of work to backport drivers and
> > regression-test the kernels and ISOs,
> 
> Those drivers could (also) be provided by the community; and the fact
> that I saw some drivers for breezy in (private) third party repos shows
> that this already happens.  So wouldn't it be nicer if they would be
> available from a central repository then, where everybody can find them
> easily?

The only officially-supported add-on driver package is
linux-restricted-modules.  This is because sometimes, when issuing a
security update for the kernel, it is necessary to break compatibility with
modules.  When this happens, any package providing a kernel module must be
rebuilt.  This is one of the reasons why we build as many drivers as
possible from the kernel tree itself.  The only exception we make is for
linux-restricted-modules, where these modules are segregated because they do
not meet Ubuntu's licensing guidelines.

It isn't practical to package many supported modules separately, because
this would complicate and slow down the process of preparing security
updates (the last place we want delays and complexity).

> I understand that they can't be included in the default kernel-image
> packages after release without extensive testing, but when distributed
> in a separate package they can only cause regressions for those who
> can't use their system correctly anyway...

I agree, and if we can find a way to do this without a huge maintenance
headache, I wouldn't mind seeing updated drivers available in -backports.
I've registered a spec for it:

https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/driver-backports

-- 
 - mdz



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