Re: Thin air

[Riley Williams]

Hi there.

 > I am a software engineer. My department has developed a PCI 10Mb
 > Ethernet NIC, and I have completed its device driver for Linux
 > by modifying the generic clone ne2k-pci.c which is written by
 > Donald Becker.

 > Would you please tell me how I should port my driver to Red Hat
 > or Slackware Linux to expect it will be present in the future
 > version of Linux kernel.

Neither Red Hat nor Slackware (nor any of the other distributors if it
comes to that) have anything to say regarding what goes into the Linux
kernel, so porting to either of them won't help.

If you have developed such a card and driver, and want your driver to
be distributed as part of the standard Linux kernel, the simplest way
is to post a diff file against the latest kernel (either 2.2.9 or
2.3.2 as I write) that adds the relevant support to the kernel, and
include an offer to supply the relevant card to a senior kernel hacker
for testing and debugging purposes.

Note that diff files made against other than the latest kernel are
usually ignored...

Best wishes from Riley.

+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux  |
| development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, |
| in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone |
| else has already done so and is just about to release their patch.   |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
 * ftp://ftp.MemAlpha.cx/pub/rhw/Linux
 * http://www.MemAlpha.cx/kernel.versions.html