Den 18. april 2012 09:14, skrev Martin Pitt: > Hello Desktop fans, > > We have had Jockey for quite a while now to perform the installation > of proprietary (e. g. NVidia), alternative (e. g. fglrx vs. > fglrx-updates), third-party (e. g. from openprinting.org) drivers.
Hardware! Yes, that's an area where large improvements can be made. The ability to easily install third-party drivers is obviously quite valuable. But how do people actually look at drivers? I don't think most people understands the difference between open drivers and proprietary third-party drivers. Nor do I think they care. And why should they? What they want, is for their hardware to work properly. If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a "Hardware manager". Ubuntu is currently promoting drivers as an optional extra. But that's not true; drivers are always necessary for all hardware. One problem with doing that, is that when you're missing an important driver and it's not available in Jockey, then you get the impression that Ubuntu has no drivers for your system. Reality is that Ubuntu has nearly all of your drivers, but missing one. Users should see that. Otherwise, we're always reinforcing the negative without showing anything positive. The moon looks smaller when it's near the horizon, because you have something to compare it to. So let's compare the one thing that doesn't work with the huge number of things that does. If changes are to be made, I would propose that it displayed all your hardware, what drivers it is currently using and then make it easy to install other drivers. From this application, you should be able to export your hardware info so that you can easily provide this to support. (System Info > Hardware Manager > Send To: pastebin | email | IM | etc). That is to say, even if your computer doesn't require any proprietary drivers, the application should still be useful. It would then display the drivers, the developer being listed as Linux. If there are alternatives, or third-party drivers are required, then you should be able to easily install them. As a service to the user, this application should also provide links to the manufacturers website for further support. This would both be helpful to the user, and show who's responsible. In other words; "We have installed all your drivers for you automatically, except that one." Perhaps this application could also be used to try and find out which computer model you have, and provide some kind of forum where you can connect to other users with the same hardware? That way, people can share their experiences, and support would be able to help a large number of people at the same time, instead of each user having to begin with a Google search and go from there. That would enable automatic detection of some troublesome hardware as well, because it would automatically get many posts. This wouldn't have to be fully automatic, but it should be possible to limit the number of possible models based on the hardware. Then you can look through a photo album to make it easier to spot your model. If you can't find it, then you can upload an image of your own, and then people could help identify that computer, enabling you to more easily get support – improving Ubuntus database of models at the same time. Right now, driver support seems bad in Ubuntu. It's actually awesome. We need to display it as such. When drivers can't be provided at all, it must be obvious to the user who is responsible for that and preferably how to contact them. Don't you think? Jo-Erlend Schinstad -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
