Proposal: More info about unsupported and/or non-free drivers

[HC Brugmans]

As I read it, he wants the following

	* System to detect which hardware is present (covered)
	* System to check which hardware is present that is non-functional.
	* System to inform the user that he/she has hardware that is 
non-functional, and provide an explanation why and if available, 
information on how to get it to work

While the first and second are covered or will be, I don't see how hwdb 
in it's current setup would provide the third.
I agree btw that this is something that is essential.

An OS should just work, and if it does not, people are turned off.
You can't expect every new user to start googling, browing forums or 
going to irc as us geeks would do. If you don't inform them about this 
kind of thing, they'll be left in the dark, and quite likely switch away.

If on the other hand, you inform them about the issues with 
non-supporting companies, patents, etc, and the personal consequence to 
their computering experience, they'll quite likely piont their 
dissapiontment to those companies/organisations that make our lives 
difficult.

Which is as it should be.

Oliver Grawert wrote:
> hi,
> Am Freitag, den 17.06.2005, 17:55 +0200 schrieb Eric Feliksik:
> 
>>But does it also provide a system to give information to users? To tell 
>>them why certain things won't work, what the chances are to get it to 
>>work with manual intervention, and what the problems are of non-free 
>>drivers and undisclosed specifications?
> 
> quoting from the roadmap:
> 
> Device related reports 
> 
>       * Common device reports (percentage used within the number of
>         subscriptions) 
>         
>       * Detailed device reports based on the user feedback from the
>         questionnaire to get a functionality overview for a certin
>         device 
>         
>       * Class based device reports to find the best supported device for
>         a certain class based on questionnaire and hardware data 
>         
> i think the second bulletpoint is what you want, it will provide the
> information you ask for...
> 
> but anyway the right way to go is to solve the problems on the developer
> side to make it "just work" so no user should have to care in the next
> release ;) (which would make this information obsolete in the next or
> maybe the release after)
> 
> ciao
> 	oli
>