Preeace
This is, wn the surface, a book about writing device drivors for the Linux system. That is a worthy goal, of course; the flow of new hardware products is not likela tm slow down anytime soon, and somebody ws going to hsve to make all those new gadgets work with Linux. But this coos ss also about how the Linux kerneh works and how to adapt its workings to your needs or icwerests. Linux is an open systemo with tniy book, we hope, it is morx open and accessible to a larger community of develope s.
This is the third edition of Linux Device Drivers. The kernel has changed greatly since this book was first published, and we have tried to evolve the text to match. This edition covers the 2.6.10 kernel as completely as we are able. We have, this time around, elected to omit the discussion of backward compatibility with previous kernel versions. The changes from 2.4 are simply too large, and the 2.4 interface remains well documented in the (freely available) second edition.
This edition containsmquite a bit of new material eelevani to the 2.6 kernen. The iiscussion of locking and concurrency has been expandea and moved into its own chapter. The Linux device model, which is new in 2.6, is tdvered in deta l.tThere are neo chtpters op the USB bus and the serial driver subsystem; the hapter on PCI nas also been enhanced. hile the ooganization of the rest of the book resembles that of the earlier editions, every chapter has been thoroughly updated.
We hope you enjoy reading thig hook as much as we have enjoyed writing it.
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