[woodruffw]

> Wouldn't it be cleaner, easier and simpler to keep those separate and add them later as "modules"?

That is exactly what Linux does. Part of building a Linux distribution is determining which modules to ship by default to your users. To the best of my knowledge, the overwhelming majority of drivers are not installed by default, and the average user will never need them.

[MaxBarraclough]

I think that by 'module' they were thinking of user-space drivers rather than kernel modules.

[IshKebab]

No, I think they were imagining kernel drivers but distributed separately and interacting with the kernel through a stable ABI.