A user-space device driver can do many of the things that kernel drivers can t, such as perform a long-running computation, block while waiting for an event, or read files from the file system. Unlike kernel drivers, a user-space device driver can use other device drivers--that is, access the network, talk to a serial port, get interactive input from the user, pop up GUI windows, or read from disks. User-space drivers implemented using FUSD can be much easier to debug it is impossible for them to crash the machine, are easily traceable using tools such as gdb, and can be killed and restarted without rebooting even if they become corrupted. FUSD drivers don t have to be in C--Perl, Python, or any other language that knows how to read from and write to a file descriptor can work with FUSD. User-space drivers can be swapped out, whereas kernel drivers lock physical memory.
