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I understand the purpose of a device driver, can you refer to a module interchangeably?
Aaron
Posted 2009-07-25T22:00:25.807
Reputation: 1 228
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A module is just a bunch of code that can be loaded into Linux. Note that this terminology is specific to Linux; windows typically calls everything a driver, I believe.
In Linux, frequently modules will be device drivers - that is, software that drives some specific piece of hardware (device). Likewise, on Windows, many drivers will be device drivers. However there are drivers and modules that don't drive hardware - for example, some Linux systems may have IPv6 support as a loadable module. Or filesystems such as ISO9660 may be drivers or modules.
bdonlan
Posted 2009-07-25T22:00:25.807
Reputation: 1 463
OK, so with regards to Linux, a module is all that is required to 'communicate' with say for instance a graphic card? – Aaron – 2009-07-26T18:17:30.947
2Not necessarily. With graphics cards in particular, the driver is usually split up across one (or more) kernel modules, an X server component, and a GL library that's linked into all client programs. – bdonlan – 2009-07-26T21:42:17.570