Though ndiswrapper has made DriverLoader unneeded for many people, only network drivers are supported.

A concerted effort is needed to make Win32-Linux driver layers for all categories of devices. This would greatly expand the range of Linux adoption to new masses of hardware.

The challenge is that Linux (and Unix in general) uses different layers for different types of drivers, so each one must be developed differently:

* Printer drivers are separated into the actual device (kernel layer) and the protocol passed over it (application layer as a "print filter").

* Video drivers were traditionally monolithic "X" server variants. Next xorg separated the drivers into modules (but in xorg-specific format, not a kernel module). Finally, we are getting Kernel Mode Setting which puts the hardware under kernel control to some degree and has the right amount of separation.

These are just two examples, but note that the driver formats are very different and so a developer cannot take skills from one type of driver to another as well as in Windows development. This is one reason for the challenge.

Nevertheless, if you want to earn the gratitude of the Linux using world, enabling even one more device class to use Windows drivers would do it!

Unfortunately, when you recieve a new hard drive, it is completely blank. It gets worse when you install an OS other than windows. I have a Dell XPS m1330 and i had to get a completely new hard drive and I installed Ubuntu SE and the drivers for my computer are only for Windows... I need programs so I can install these drivers on my XPS.

I think it is a fantastic idea to be able to use windows drivers in linux. I'm very sorry to see that this article is 6 years old and I still don't see any common use of windows drivers in linux yet.