Comments on: What is Device Drivers https://www.emblogic.com/blog/01/what-is-device-drivers/ Embedded System and ARM Training Mon, 07 Oct 2013 04:00:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.1 By: admin https://www.emblogic.com/blog/01/what-is-device-drivers/#comment-521 Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:39:16 +0000 http://emblogic.org/blog/?p=1621#comment-521 Another much-trumpeted advantage of Linux is that it does not need to be rebooted as often as other operating systems. You might think that this is due to its rock solid stability. You may think I am now going to talk about the quality of the device drivers. But you’d be wrong. The reason that Linux device drivers lead to less rebooting is that we can reconfigure, load or unload them without restarting the system.

To do this modular kernel drivers are used.
How to load a module

Most people configure their modules at install time and then leave them alone. All the major distributions have taken to modules because of another advantage they have: size. Distribution makers want to support all the possible cards and devices that Linux can. If we compiled all these into the kernel it would be huge. If several different static kernels for different devices were supplied then they would take up too much space, as well. With the modular system distribution makers supply a stripped down kernel plus a comprehensive set of device drivers. This typically only occupies two or three floppy disks in total.

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