Hey all. I currently run CentOS 4.0 (which is a rebuild of RHEL 4).

Red Hat has decided to cut out of their kernel the bttv drivers and a lot of other video4linux features, the reason being is that they don't deem them stable enough to include in an enterprise product. So what I have been doing is downloading the source code for BTTV and compiling them against Red Hat's kernel's. One thing at www.video4linux.net that concerns me is that the last release was made over a year ago. Has development halted for the BTTV driver outside of the kernel source tree? If so, this could pose a problem for me as I would have to compile my own kernels if Red Hat's newer kernels use a driver interface not compatable with the older BTTV driver. Is it common for a kernel module to not see development for over a year? Is the driver still seeing development inside the 2.6 series kernel?

Thx (and please don't flame if you think this is a stupid post).

PS I know some of you are going to mention the unsupported kernel offered by the CentOS team that includes things like BTTV. Well, that kernel is useless, it crashes on numerous machines for me. It isn't usable.

The developer of BTTV, SAA7134, and cx88 has stop the progress for 2.4.x kernels. The developer has switched to 2.6.x kernels because it includes Video4Linux2 which is better. There has been some improvements and cleanups for BTTV. Video4Linux being unreliable. Hah, it is not unreliable. I use video4linux and video4linux2 modules for 12 hours to 16 hours a day without any problems on a desktop system. The video4linux and video4linux2 modules are much more reliable than Windows video4Windows and DirectShow drivers.

Yes, and the driver that hasn't been touched for a year iss bttv 0.9.x, which is the 2.6 series kernel driver. 0.7.x was even longer ago (2.4 kernel). What I'm asking is if all new releases are only made inside of the kernel source, or if new releases will continue to be released seperately.

Check in the kernel changelogs. I'll say it again, there has been some improvements and cleanups for BTTV since the developer has switched. Ask the developer if he can give out module releases too. There are some cvs snapshots for this month.

If you download the stable kernel releases, you should not have any problems. This is because many developers tested it before stating it as a stable release.

The real video4linux site is http://linux.bytesex.org/.