On Fri, May 25, 2012 at 4:12 AM, Martin Pitt <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hello all, > > Also sending this to kubuntu-devel@, but as I'm not a subscriber > someone needs to moderate; CC'ing Scott and Harald directly. > > As discussed at UDS and in [1] we want to dramatically simplify the > machinery for installing extra drivers (NVidia, bcmwl, and friends). > Jockey was originally designed to do a lot more than we are using it > for, and be compatible with other distros as well (I had it working on > Fedora 14 back then, when we discussed it in the Linux Foundation > driver backports workgroup). But we don't use it to that extent, other > distros have moved into a different direction, and thus it has way too > much code and bugs. So Ubuntu will drop it and replace with with > something much simpler and robust, and also use upstream friendly APIs > (PackageKit). > > The logic of detecting drivers and providing PackageKit/aptdaemon > plugins is now in the ubuntu-drivers-common package (formerly known > as "nvidia-common"). This now mostly makes PackageKit/aptdaemon able > to answer a "WhatProvides(MODALIAS, pci:s0000DEADv0000BEEF...)" query > to map a piece of hardware to a driver package. It also contains a > command line tool "ubuntu-drivers" with a few commands (list, > autoinstall, and debug at the moment) which replaces jockey's usage in > the installer (which called jockey-text --no-dbus ...). > > The user interface will be made a lot simpler and less confusing, and > move into software-properties-gtk (or perhaps software-center at some > point). > > The question arises what to do with Kubuntu. We have a few obvious > options: > > * Kubuntu uses software-properties-kde, so as long as we keep > software-properties, the new design could be implemented there as > well, and jockey-kde be dropped. > > * Kubuntu implements a similar (or their own) design using the > ubuntu-drivers-common API in the KDE control center as an embedded > tab. Then we can also drop jockey-kde. > > * Kubuntu keeps jockey-kde, and takes over the Jockey maintenance. > ubuntu-drivers-common does not break Jockey, but it would still > need some maintenance to adapt to newer nvidia driver versions, > changing Qt/KDE APIs, and the like. > > * Kubuntu keeps the jockey-kde UI, but drops the backend > (jockey-common) and changes the UI to work with the > ubuntu-drivers-common API. > > In either case, automatic driver installation by Ubiquity will Just > Work (e. g. for the Broadcom wifi cards) but there should still be an > UI for enabling or changing drivers (like NVidia, which is not > auto-installed) manually. > > Opinions? > > Thanks, > > Martin > > [1] > https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/desktop-q-third-party-driver-installation > > I think a simpler code base is great. I noticed that Jockey is still included in Quantal daily builds today. Couple of related questions: 1) Once there is support directly in software center to indicate which packages support your hardware, will Jockey be dropped from ubuntu ISOs? 2) Have you considered expanding the auto_install_filter to also install the packages in the archive that improve the virtualization experience so that this is set up on first boot if appropriate? -- Mario Limonciello [email protected]
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