[fprint] Drivers in user space or kernel space.

[Fausto Carvalho Marques Silva]

Ok, it would be just like the alsa and pcscd caos.
Anyway, i thought it was because "Linus" did not wanted.
Thanks.

On 26-01-2012 12:40, Bastien Nocera wrote:
> On Thu, 2012-01-26 at 12:03 -0200, Fausto Carvalho Marques Silva wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>> i have an old dout about the fingerprint scanner support in the linux
>> world.
>> Why does the fingerprint scanners drivers are all written in the user
>> space with libusb and
>> not in the kernel space? It would be more easy to configure in ".config"
>> and wide availble if
>> it were in the kernel configuration. Many other things seens to be
>> inside the kernel but not
>> fingerprint scanners. Do you have any explanation for this (historical
>> or technical?
> Simple. Most USB devices with custom protocols are implemented in
> user-space because it means that you can avoid having to create a
> framework, with much stricter API requirements, in the kernel. If you
> were to write kernel drivers, and got the API done, you would probably
> need user-space daemons/libraries to talk to the driver.
>
> Finally, user-space is interesting because it means that it works on any
> platform where libusb works, including Windows, MacOS X and the *BSDs.
>
>


Fausto Carvalho Marques Silva