On Fri, May 14, 2010 at 11:16, Linus Torvalds wrote:

On Fri, 14 May 2010, Matthew Garrett wrote:

quoted

I've done some experimentation under qemu. On ACPI systems, Windows will
*only* touch the keyboard controller if there's a device with an
appropriate PNP HID or CID and if _STA evaluates to 0x0b or 0x0f.
Otherwise it'll simply ignore the hardware entirely. By the looks of it
their keyboard probing is also somewhat different to ours, but that's
probably another story.

Well, I'd hate to lose the keyboard hotplug capability, but at the same
time, it _is_ 2010, and while I have personally used it historically, I
don't really foresee ever using it again.

So we _could_ decide to just try it, and see if anybody screams. If nobody
does, that would be a very simple solution to the problem.

i still actively use it on my linux router (normally headless and no
input), as well as my main desktop from time to time :x.  although
"actively" might not be the correct term as i dont usually have to
poke my linux router anymore ... it doesnt break very often anymore
which means i dont plug in anything at all.
-mike