Foreword
If you're holding this book, you may be asking yourself: Why "yet another" Linux device driver book? Aren't there already a bunch of them?
The answer is: This book is a quantum leap ahead of the others.
First, it is up-to-date, covering recent 2.6 kernels. Second, and more important, this book is thorough. Most device driver books just cover the topics described in standard Unix internals books or operating system books, such as serial lines, disk drives, and filesystems, and, if you're lucky, the networking stack.
This book goes much further; it doesn't shy away from the hard stuff that you have to deal with on modern PC and embedded hardware, such as PCMCIA, USB, I2C, video, audio, flash memory, wireless communications, and so on. You name it, if the Linux kernel talks to it, then this book tells you about it.
No stone is left unturned; no dark corner is left unilluminated.
Furthermore, the author has earned his stripes: It's a thrill ride just to read his description of putting Linux on a wristwatch in the late 1990s!
I'm pleased and excited to have this book as part of the Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series. It is a shining example of the exciting things happening in the Open Source world. I hope that you will find here what you need for your work on the kernel, and that you will enjoy the process, too!
Arnold Robbins
Series Editor
