Hi there. Quick question. I've just spent about half an hour this morning attempting to get a framebuffer running (via the i810fb driver) in my Slackware 12.1 install in order to get DirectFB working. I've done the searching and found out that in order to get the driver working, it needs to be compiled directly into the kernel instead of a kernel module.

I built the kernel enough times do this easily, but my question is why so many distros build these as modules when there doesn't seem a way to get them working unless they are compiled directly in? Sorry, I'm a kernel newbie, but this question will be on my mind unless it's answered. Or am I mistaken and it's possible to use the module? It was just that all of the answers that I read were to compile it directly in to the kernel.

Once a module is loaded, there is no difference between how the code got into the kernel - loaded or compiled in.
Once it's loaded ...

If you need it prior to then, it needs to be in the initrd. Seems you can pass options across via the bootloader - makes it sound like it needs to be there reasonably early in the boot sequence. I can't say why distro devs do what they do - in lots of ways.