Better interactions with new upstream version on drivers

[Mario Limonciello]

Hi Everyone,

Recently I stepped up to the position of the primary maintainer for the
upstream fglrx package build scripts for Ubuntu.  As maintainer for it,
I wanted to make it a priority to make an easier experience for people
installing new versions of the driver.

In an upcoming Catalyst release (7.12 I believe is the number), I've
added dkms support, allowing the package to build its own kernel module
via dkms and move any old modules out of the way.  This removes the old
requirement of having to setup build-essential manually and use module
assistant to build the package.

I would still like to improve the user interaction for newer driver
releases further if at all possible.

I was wondering what people's views would be on having
restricted-manager (or a similar tool), grabbing newer driver releases
and running the package generation for people?  This is currently a weak
point, requiring people to drop to a command line to build/install a
newer driver that might say add support for their new cards, or improve
performance.

Currently this would only be applicable for fglrx, since nvidia doesn't
include a package generation suite in their driver installer.  I think
with the correct framework in place however, this could encourage a
similar package generation suite to be added to nvidia releases.

Regards,

-- 
Mario Limonciello
superm1 at ubuntu.com


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