[Desktop 12.10 Topic] The future of third-party driver installation

[Jo-Erlend Schinstad]

Den 23. april 2012 08:55, skrev Martin Pitt:
> Jo-Erlend Schinstad [2012-04-20  1:56 +0200]:
>> If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a "Hardware
>> manager".
> That's exactly what I want to avoid. If anything, the UI should become
> easier, not more complex. Large trees with lots of technobabble and
> incomprehensible hardware parts names, properties, and drivers is
> just about the last thing we need to improve usability IMHO. :-)
>

Right. I remember back in 1998 or something. I asked about drivers, and
people told me there's no need to think about that. The drivers are
built into the kernel. And for the most part, they were. Fourteen years
later, however, drivers are still an issue. Things are improving. When
10.04 was released, I had to use proprietary drivers for my Radeon HD.
Now it's optional. I still choose to, because they're so very much
better than the built-in ones.

Perhaps when 20.04 is released, all of these problems will have been
forgotten. In the meantime, we need to provide proprietary drivers. As
long as we have to provide proprietary drivers, we should also show the
Free Software drivers. It's a little difficult for me to understand why
anyone in the Ubuntu community would disagree with this.

Sadly, reality is that people are going to have issues with their
hardware for a long time to come. All of this is currently because
"Ubuntu sucks". And, to be honest, it does. Fixing hardware issues in
Ubuntu is very complicated. Even finding out how to find out where to go
to try and get some help, is complicated.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad