Subject: Re: 2.6.16, sk98lin out of date

From: Daniel Drake <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 2006 19:48:20 +0000

Alistair John Strachan wrote:
> Thanks Matti, I wasn't even aware of this driver. Might I suggest the
> "old" driver be marked as such in Linux 2.6.16. I guess I must've
> skipped over it because it begins with "New", and does not contain
> the word "Marvell", which is indicated exclusively by lspci.

I changed the help text of all 3 drivers (sk98lin/skge/sky2) to
point out which ones are/aren't interchangable in 2.6.16. The situation 
is a little confusing.

The reason that the sk98lin diff is so huge is because SysKonnect
effectively added support for a substantially different range of cards
(Yukon-2) into the existing driver. This is far from the driver quality
required for the kernel today, so Stephen Hemminger (skge author) wrote 
a new driver (sky2) for the Yukon-2 range.

The long term plan is to obsolete and remove sk98lin, but we aren't 
ready yet: skge issues pop up every month or two, and sky2 is young. 
Stephen's own words:

> I applaud the initiative, but this it is too premature to obsolete
> the existing driver. There may be lots of chip versions and other
> variables that make the existing driver a better choice.

Daniel