Re: [E1000-devel] e100 firmware in 2.6.29-rc7?

[Ben G. <gr...@ca...>]

Dan Williams wrote:

>> Well, that's an annoyance.  Would it be that hard to allow modular drivers
>> to compile-in their FW as well?  It would be a nice option for
>> those of us trying to build portable pre-compiled kernels for various
>> distributions and distribution versions.
> 
> Most of those distros will have firmware loading capability though,
> right?  Every non-embedded distro (Fedora, RHEL, SUSE, Ubuntu,
> Slackware, Mandriva, Xandros, etc) has it, so if you're building kernels
> for those, there's not really a problem with dropping firmware into the
> firmware directory for that distro, right?

No, but figuring out the problem from a customer's bug report ("nothing works")
and then finding the firmware and having the customer install it will be much
worse than just having everything work like it used to.

I just see zero benefits to having external firmware
for the vast majority of end-users, and lots of downside
for at least myself.

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Greear <gr...@ca...>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com