Open source enthusiasts weigh in on the Linux kernel modules they love.
![Linux keys on the keyboard for a desktop computer][1]
The Linux kernel is turning 30 this year! If you're like us, that's a big deal and we are celebrating Linux this week with a couple of special posts.
Today we start with a roundup of responses from around the community answering"What Linux kernel module can you not live without? And, why?" Let's hear what these 10 enthusiasts have to say.
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I guess some kernel developers will run away screaming when they hear my answer. Still, I list here two of the most controversial modules:
* First is NVIDIA, as I have an NVIDIA graphics card on my work laptop and my personal desktop.
* The other one probably generates less hatred—the VMNET and VMMON modules from VMware to be able to run VMware Workstation. —[Peter Czanik][2]
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My favorite is the [zram][3] module.It creates a compressed block device in memory, which can then be used as a swap partition. Using a zram-based swap partition is ideal when memory is limited (for example, on virtual machines) and if you are worried about wearing out your SSD or, even worse, your flash-based storage because of frequent I/O operations. —[Stephan Avenwedde][4]
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The most useful kernel module is definitively snd-hda-intel since it supports most integrated sound cards. I listen to music while coding an audio sequencer on the Linux desktop. —[Joël Krähemann][5]
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My laptop would be worthless without the kmod-wl that I generate with the Broadcom file. I sometimes get messages about tainting the kernel, but what good is a laptop without wireless? —[Gregory Pittman][6]
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I can't live without Bluetooth. Without it, my mouse, keyboard, speakers, and headset would be doorstops. —[Gary Smith][7]
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I'm going to go out on a limb and say_all of them_. Seriously, we've gotten to the point where I grab a random piece of hardware, plug it in, and it just works.
* USB serial adapterjust works
* Video cardjust works (though maybe not at its best)
* Network cardjust works
* Sound cardjust works
It's tough not to be utterly impressed with the broad scope of the driver work that all the modules bring to the whole. I remember the bad old days when we used to yell out xrandr magic strings to make projectors work, and now—yeah, it's a genuine rarity when stuff doesn't (mostly) just work.
If I had to nail it down to one, though, it'd be raid6. —[John 'Warthog9' Hawley][8]
* * *
I'm going to go back to the late 1990s for this one. I was a Unix systems administrator (and double duty as IS manager) for a small company. Our tape backup system died, and because of "small company" limited budgets, we didn't have a rush replacement or onsite repair on it. So we had to send it in for repair.
During those two weeks, we didn't have a way to make tape backups. No systems administrator wants to be in that position.
But then I remembered reading the [Floppy Tape How-to][9], and we happened to have a tower PC we'd just replaced that had a floppy tape drive.
So I reinstalled it with Linux, set up the **ftape** kernel driver module, ran a few backup/recovery tests, then ran our most important backups to QIC tapes. For those two weeks, we relied on **ftape** backups of critical data.
So to the unsung hero out there who made floppy tape drives work on 1990s Linux, you are awesome! —[Jim Hall][10]
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Well, that's easy. It's the kvm kernel modules. On a personal front, I cannot imagine doing my day-to-day work without VMs. I'd like to believe that's the case with most of us. The kvm modules also play a big part in making Linux central to the cloud strategy. —[Gaurav Kamathe][11]
* * *
For me, it's dm-crypt, which is used for LUKS. See:
[1]: https://opensource.com/sites/default/files/styles/image-full-size/public/lead-images/linux_keyboard_desktop.png?itok=I2nGw78_ (Linux keys on the keyboard for a desktop computer)
