Linux driver for embedded Linux

Question

I'm looking to attach some USB devices to my embedded Linux board. It is an TI-ARM processor running embedded Linux, but I guess it could be any embedded Linux board.

If I purchase an USB device which has Linux support/driver, can this driver (generally) be re-compiled to work with the ARM architecture? (Instead of Windows ect.).

Answer 1

Yes, USB drivers can generally be expected to compile for other architectures other than x86. Of course this presumes that your board does have a host USB port. There are a few boards that have only USB device ports, and many SoCs have both USB host & device ports.

But successfully compiling the (USB) driver may only be part of the task.
Some (USB) devices may require additional packages of libraries and other drivers for interfacing to application programs. For instance a USB digital TV tuner requires numerous packages (V4L, ALSA, I2C driver, userland firmware loading) to actually work.

Clarification
These additional dependencies that you may have to build are not because of USB.
The dependencies are related to the type of device.
An Ethernet interface, whether integrated into the SoC or offboard using USB, would be easily configured for full support in the kernel (e.g. protocol stack) and userland (e.g. Busybox has ifconfig, ping and routing apps).
A PCI TV tuner would have the same dependencies as the USB tuner. But the embedded environment typically means that you don't have any/most of these multimedia dependencies already built/installed.