brainstorming for UDS-N - Hardware Compatibility

[Jorge O. Castro]

On Thu, Sep 30, 2010 at 10:35 AM, Daniel Chen <seven.steps at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 9:33 AM, Jorge O. Castro <jorge at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> Along the same lines it would be nice if the installer would try to
>> get the backported drivers during installation if it finds that the
>> shipped driver doesn't work. I had a machine during the Karmic cycle
>> that needed a backported driver to get wireless, the only way I knew
>> it was a trivial fix was that I knew about the package.
>
> Taking the case of a wireless driver needed from a backported kernel
> or l-b-m, there would need to be additional logic to handle attempting
> such a download only if a matching signed Ubuntu repository for that
> release were reachable.  It seems reasonable enough.

I was chatting with Evan about this on IRC and I've come up with a
basic brainstormy idea that Jockey can provide: "I realize I'm on a
notebook, but can't find wireless, I wonder if I can try harder and
grab the backported kernel drivers? Please plug in a network cable"
And if the user isn't close to ethernet maybe having a hook somewhere
that does "I've noticed you've plugged into a wired connection, now
would be a good time for me to go find your wireless driver, ok?"
would be doable.

Basically my gist is we already support a bunch of hardware it's just
hard for users to find it sometimes and making an effort to improve
that would be a nice low hanging fruit. (If it actually is low hanging
fruit)

...