A new interface for implementing device drivers outside the kernel has one project saving about 5,000 lines of code.

User-space data-path processing comes with its own overheads. Since the network drivers run in kernel context and use kernel-space memory for packet storage, there is an overhead of copying the packet ...

A user space driver model would give the kernel team the freedom to do whatever they want while the drivers can stay in tact. No wonder no manufacturer wants to write Linux drivers!

Kernel drivers prove particularly useful because they offer direct access to hardware such as interrupts, I/O ports, and physical memory. But because these drivers run in kernel memory space, any bugs ...

At the end of the last column, I said it is simple to talk to a USB device from user space, without needing a custom kernel driver. Way back during the development of the original Linux USB code, a ...

Using these two features, a user-space implementation of a dynamic /dev now is possible that can provide a flexible device naming policy. This article discusses udev, a program that replaces the ...

Is it better than what existed before? Certainly. AMD and Intel have maintained open source GPU drivers, in both the kernel and user space, for years, though also with proprietary firmware.

Kernel space is reserved for running a privileged operating system kernel process including drivers. User space is the memory area that is reserved for running programs and software.