Kernel Log: Coming in 2.6.36 (Part 4) – Drivers

“Drivers in 2.6.36 include considerably improved support for
infra-red receivers and remotes, optimised USB drivers, and a
solution for a much discussed problem that Android developers, in
one way or another, had solved long ago.

“When releasing the sixth beta version of Linux 2.6.36 on
Wednesday last week, Linus Torvalds indicated that Linux kernel
2.6.36 would soon be published. The Kernel Log therefore closes its
mini-series on 2.6.36 with this fourth instalment focusing on
changes to drivers and the infrastructure related to them, such as
ACPI, PCI etc. The Part 1 of the series dealt with changes
concerning graphics hardware; Part 2 with file systems and storage
/ network hardware; and Part 3 with memory management, the build
system, and support for various CPU and system architectures.

“IR hardware, Video4Linux and USB

“The subsystem introduced in 2.6.35 for infra-red hardware now
offers interfaces that the LIRC userspace daemon can use to share
raw data with infra-red receivers and transmitters; for instance,
the daemon decodes the IR data if the kernel driver is not able to
(1, 2). A number of new drivers for IR hardware from various
vendors were added to the still young IR subsystem. Most of them
are ports of LIRC drivers that used to be maintained externally; a
number of LIRC drivers that have not yet migrated were put into
staging for the time being – for details, see “Minor gems” at
the end of this article in the section on V4L.”

Complete Story