Automatic Linux device driver upgrades are coming

DELL has been working with Linux vendors on something called Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) for about five years, according to Linux-Watch.

DKMS is a framework for Linux kernel dependent device driver modules that will enable automatic driver upgrades without requiring users to compile drivers by hand or wait for new kernel releases.

Matt Domsch, Dell Linux technology strategist, said "This will eventually be used to automatically download drivers that match the hardware you have in your system but which aren't presently in your [Linux distribution's] kernel."

Dell has already used DKMS to distribute updated device drivers for Red Hat, SUSE, and Ubuntu Linux systems, and DKMS is designed to be Linux distribution and hardware architecture agnostic. µ