On 03/10/15 13:19, Peter wrote:
Is it beyond reason to request certain older drivers be enabled in the i686 kernel for CentOS 7 to help support the older hardware that you might find in 32 bit machines? I have an old gateway laptop that I'm trying it out on and it needs the b43 driver enabled.
Thanks,
Peter
The main issue here is one of security.
There is no responsibility on Red Hat to maintain drivers disabled in the RHEL7 kernel, so if CentOS enables drivers for a 32-bit kernel build that are disabled by default in the RHEL kernel, then CentOS would need to take responsibility/ownership for maintaining those drivers within the CentOS kernel, backporting security fixes as necessary.
That is a very different proposition than just rebuilding upstream sources, requiring a very different skill set and resources.
Further, down the line you will most likely find that the driver won't compile when enabled. For example, the wireless stack has been updated in the RHEL7.2beta kernel from kernel-4.1-rc6, yet the b43 driver in the kernel source will still be from the original 3.10.0 branch. It's unlikely to compile and will probably need backporting from 4.1.
Your best bet is probably to backport the driver yourself and build it out of tree - a lot simpler than building a whole kernel just for one driver.