Get The Linux Input Driver Subsystem

The Input subsystem is an abstraction layer between input devices (keyboard, mouse, joystick, and so on) and input handlers. The input devices capture inputs from the user actions or from other sources and produce input events. For instance a key press results in an input event.

Instead, a kernel module is a collection of subroutines and data. A device driver is a kernel module that forms a software interface to an input/output (I/O) device. The subroutines in a device driver provide entry points to the device.

For micro-kernel, drivers are treated as application (or servers) in its own entity. In general, drivers provide detail implementation to specific physical or logical devices, while kernel then provide a set of interface for drivers, and manage them in a higher abstracted level (HAL).

A device driver is a loadable kernel module that manages data transfers between a device and the OS. Loadable modules are loaded at boot time or by request and are unloaded by request. A device driver is a collection of C routines and data structures that can be accessed by other kernel modules.

The Linux kernel device drivers are, essentially, a shared library of privileged, memory resident, low level hardware handling routines. It is Linux's device drivers that handle the peculiarities of the devices they are managing. One of the basic features of is that it abstracts the handling of devices.

Loadable Modules The Linux kernel offers support for quite a few different types (or classes) of modules, including, but not limited to, device drivers.

These Drivers are stored, as we saw, in the /lib/modules/ directory. Sometimes, the Module file name will imply about the type of Hardware it supports. Often, a search on Google would give the Module's name, assuming we looked for the chip-set, not for the marketing name of the Hardware.