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So only some distributions get a stable ABI but not others, leaving users of distributions with less support with a less usable system. I sincerely question th

• JoshTriplett 12y ago
  Distributions whose users want an unchanging ABI get one. Distributions whose users don't care (e.g. those where either the users don't care about proprietary/out-of-tree drivers or the users use the packaged versions of those drivers in the distribution that get rebuilt when the kernel changes) don't bother. Your arguments assume that everyone obviously wants an unchanging driver ABI. I'd love to see statistics for how many users actually build and run out-of-tree drivers themselves, but I'd bet on it being a small fraction, most of which is the nVidia or ATI proprietary graphics drivers. And again, personally, I don't consider it a feature to cater to proprietary driver vendors. Beyond that, I've seen several reports regarding some of what binary driver vendors do that goes well beyond the exported driver interface (e.g. searching for core kernel data structures in memory and grubbing around in them), so it's not necessarily obvious that an unchanging driver ABI would actually stop binary drivers from breaking. In any case, I'm not interested in arguing further about the development practices I've already mentioned and pointed to that depend on the ability to evolve an interface along with all of its users.