Driver Types

Driver Types
	Chapter 6. Drivers

There are two types of drivers:

Internal drivers that are part of the kernel binary and are therefore part of kernel memory when the system is running, and
external drivers that are not part of a kernel binary which are loaded into user memory when required.

These external drivers are also known as loadable kernel modules.

Figure 6.2. Loadable modules

Loadable modules exist as disk files, stored under /lib/modules. These can be loaded into user memory as required. They can also be unloaded from user memory when you don't need them anymore.