Standardised Hardware Support Spec - Please Review

[Chris Wagner]

I'm probably way out of my element, here, but wouldn't the ideal
solution be to load services based on what hardware is present.  And by
"what hardware is present", I don't mean at install or boot-up; I mean
it in general (i.e., if someone plugs in an HP printer, then the HP
printer service(s) will get loaded).

I don't know for sure that this isn't already happening to some extent,
but I just checked to see if I have any superfluous services running,
and I found a "Graphic tablets management" service running, which I
doubt that I need.

Is that not the sort of thing HAL was intended for?  Or perhaps this
would require another little service on top of HAL that has access to a
hardware database and information about what services (and packages?)
are relevant for each device (?).

This would at least avoid the extra services.  You would still have the
problem of extra software installed for a few of the more important
things (HP printers, Bluetooth, ...).  Alex's proposal my be good for
dealing with that, though, for the few who are concerned.


On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 21:24 +0100, Alex Jones wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-04-05 at 19:58 +0100, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 04, 2007 at 12:57:06PM +0100, Alex Jones wrote:
> > > This comes about as more and more people question why their computer
> > > starts bluetooth services when they don't have a bluetooth device, or
> > > why I have a HP printer driver control panel applet, or a Palm Pilot
> > > sync applet, or PCMCIA services, etc. etc. etc...
> > 
> > This was a conscious decision.  Our belief is that users should not need to
> > find or install additional software to make use of common devices.  They
> > should "just work" out of the box.  If your intent is to suggest a way to
> > address the problem of superfluous menu items, a better way to do that would
> > be to investigate hiding the menu items unless the relevant hardware is
> > detected (via HAL).
> 
> I'm /not/ suggesting we don't install a core set of hardware support
> software by default. I am suggesting that users be given a choice by
> packaging drivers, etc., according to this spec.
> 
> With this system in place, I could look at my hardware support package
> manager and see "Generic Bluetooth module", "HP Printers", etc., and
> just untick them to uninstall the cruft that I don't have any use for.
> 
> (As a side thought, I'm not sure what constitutes "common" hardware, but
> I for one don't know a single person who owns a Palm device.)