Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 1 Jun 2004 15:06:03 +0100 | From | John Bradford <> | Subject | Re: keyboard problem with 2.6.6 |
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Quote from Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>: > Hi! > > > >>>>> "Giuseppe" == Giuseppe Bilotta <bilotta78@hotpop.com> writes: > > > > Giuseppe> So, while we wait for complete support, at the kernel > > Giuseppe> level, for all the multimedia keyboards supported by X, > > Giuseppe> we *need* proper raw mode. > > > > My question is: why do everything inside the kernel? > > > > > > Even 'khttpd' has been removed from the kernel, because the same > > efficiency has been achieved in the *userland* apache module. Why is > > the input layer moving _backwards_? > > > > I don't think converting between keyboard/mouse protocols and the > > input system's "struct input_event" has a tighter real-time > > requirement than a heavily loaded web server. How many keys per > > second can you type at? (Even if you type extremely fast and the > > hardware constraints (velocity, etc.) are not reached yet, there is > > still a limit that the keyboard controller, e.g. i8042, cannot > > exceed.) How many mouse movements are you making per second? Is a > > userland driver unable to handle that data rate? (I don't think so. > > I believe enve a 386-DX 33MHz can handle it with ease.) If not, then > > please do it in userland, so as not to waste kernel memory (which is > > *NON-swappable*). > > It would be nice to have keyboard in kernel because that means > keyboard works even on heavilly overloaded system, in case of oops > etc. (Unfortunately steps back were already taken; console switching > is no longer so robust w.r.t. kernel crashes :-( ).
I think it's nice to have input handling for the _console_ in the kernel for the above reasons. In most cases a PS/2 keyboard and mouse are the console input devices, but where they aren't, userspace processing might be more logical.
I think that Vojtech mentioned at some time that the in-kernel PS/2 emulation was mostly a workaround for X until X was capable of accessing the keyboard directly. Well, I would take this one stage further and say that the way I see it, in normal use, an X-based system shouldn't need a console configured in the kernel at all.
Of course, I probably wouldn't use a system like that, it wouldn't be likely to interest me at all, but I can see that it might suit normal desktop machines quite well.
So, in my opinion, it's all about X, and nothing about the kernel.
However, I don't even have much interest in X itself these days, prefering to work on the console :-).
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