Hi,

Is it true that a driver is needed for each level of hardware connection? For example, on my board there is a touch screen, between the touch screen and the SOC there is a touch screen controller chip. The controller chip is connected to the SOC on its i2c bus. So is it true that the following drivers are involved? 1)a i2c but driver, 2) a driver for the touch screen controller chip, 3) a driver for the touch screen.

Thanks,
Wei

For the most part, the necessary drivers are part of the Linux kernel, and will be autodetected when you install the OS. Now, depending on what distro you use, if you have hardware requiring proprietary drivers eg. Nvidia, or AMD Catalyst, you will have to install them seperately. If you're installing a Ubuntu-based distro, there's a tool that runs automatically and will notify you and install them for you. It's a no-brainer. Now, if you're running an Arch-based distro like I am, you have to install those drivers manually, but by the time you're ready to play with Arch, you'll know how to do that.

If you install Ubuntu, or Mint, or something along those lines, you'll have no problems (unless you have some wildly-exotic system)