Re: Future features (was Re: Discussing issues)

> >    I would say that loading the driver is the domain of the operating
> >    system, and apps/desktop only care about devices the OS has already
> >    "found."

Not all drivers are kernel side. Its like X input devices. My pen driver
is in XFree86 not in drivers/input, and I'd like to keep it that way 8)

> >    Linux hotplug is something that happens before a driver for a
> >    device is loaded, and most things we probably care about happen
> >    after a driver is loaded.

The order in the Linux case is

Some event occurs
Kernel looks at what happened
Kernel tries to find a suitable driver
Kernel kicks user space
Userspace does stuff

You can get a heirarchy of events as a result. Eg plugging in a 
camera is something like

USB core driver - new device 0x1111 , 0x4115, class USB storage
USB to user space "Hey do something with this info"
User loads usb-storage
USB storage to user space "Hey this disk has appeared"

For X the more problematic cases are probably

"Hi a new videocard appeared"

and the fact it needs to interact with the kernel and driver
databases to learn things about mice/pads etc sometiems to
work out which device its seeing for which display, and if
it has saved properties