Installing a compiler by default

[Andrew Zajac]

On 6/8/06, Matt Zimmerman <mdz at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> * The most common way to obtain a new driver for a Linux system is
>   to compile it from C source code
>
> * A common reason to install a new driver on a Linux system is to gain
>   access to the Internet, so support can be difficult to obtain in such a
>   scenario
>
> * A great deal of distribution-agnostic documentation assumes the
>   availability of gcc
>
> * Users who are new to Ubuntu have no idea how to install the necessary
>   packages for building a kernel module


User who are new to linux and are using ubuntu will use the ubuntu
documentation.  In it, installing build-essential is properly described.
It is another step in the process of:

1- finding out that they need to compile a kernel module to fix a specific
problem.
2- finding out what kernel module to build
3- obtaining it (if it is the only way to conect to the net, this is a
catch-22)
4- installing the toolchain and linux-headers package
5- building and installing the module.

Providing build-essential preinstalled will only help users who are familiar
with linux but not with ubuntu.  Users who expect gcc to be installed may be
surprised to find it absent, but I am sure they expect it to be easily
installed, which it is as well as the process being properly documented -
it's not that big an endeavour for them.

Is this such an important amount of users?  Ubuntu makes a better effort to
target non-linux-geek users, in comparison to other distros.

Users who are not familiar with linux will not really expect gcc to be
present.  The command-line is cryptic enough and they typically will not try
to grok upstream documentation, but simply cut-and-paste instructions from a
source of documentation.

Can the above five steps be made trivial in some way, either by
documentation or some sort of frontend to module-assistant?  Would that be a
better solution to the actual problem?



azz
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