Standardised Hardware Support Spec - Please Review

[Christoffer Sørensen]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Christoffer Sørensen <sorensen.christoffer at gmail.com>
Date: Apr 6, 2007 2:37 PM
Subject: Re: Standardised Hardware Support Spec - Please Review
To: Alex Jones <alex at weej.com>


On 4/6/07, Alex Jones <alex at weej.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 06:48 -0500, hggdh wrote:
> > On Fri, 2007-04-06 at 08:56 +0100, Alex Jones wrote:
> > > You wouldn't necessarily /need/ a new application to help the user
> > > remove it if it was packaged like I am suggesting. You'd remove the HSP
> > > and the installed and unneeded support packages could be apt-get
> > > autoremove'd.
> > Why not create this database, create an interface to HAL, and then just
> > start what is signaled from HAL? This way we can still have a distro
> > that will allow the casual user to just plug and play -- which is, I
> > think, quite an important thing to have.
> This isn't about running unnecessary services, it's about having them
> installed on your system in the first place.

Great idea. I second it.

> > On the other hand, I am not sure that I would like to have generic
> > autostart on a server. And, no matter what, I would really like *not* to
> > have autostarted what I do not want started, for whatever reason. We
> > should have an easy way of doing so.
> Having said what I've just said above, it would be nice if, whenever you
> hotplug a device, it gives you the option of what to do next, in a way
> similar to what happens when you plug removable media in.

This is another spec, I think.

> Personally I don't see the reason to bundle restricted drivers together
> at all. In my opinion, we should have supported HSPs that are provided
> by Ubuntu/Canonical, and unsupported HSPs that can be provided by third
> parties. All of the current "restricted" drivers would be of the
> unsupported kind. I think this is a much more logical approach to
> everyone, including non-technical end-users.

I think it makes sense for network cards, since you cannot download
anything if the network is not working.

I think your idea is good, but who is going to produce these HSPs?

If this is going to be something that should not fail, then we need
man power. Creating, testing, fixing these HSPs requires some work.

However, the current approach is not perfect. Having HPLIP, PalmOS
support, when I don't even have those devices is not that great.