In computing, a class driver is a type of hardware device driver that can operate a large number of different devices of a broadly similar type.
Class drivers are very often used with USB based devices, which share the essential USB protocol in common, and devices with similar functionality can easily adopt common protocols.
To accomplish this the manufacturers make their products compatible with a standardized protocol.
This concept is a key aspect of object oriented programming, which when extended to drivers makes it much easier for hardware vendors to provide driver support for their products.
Some operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, and Linux distributions in x86 platforms, have included a large number of class drivers.