Re: [gentoo-dev] Drivers/Portage

[Jason Rhinelander]

Martin Owens wrote:
> This is probably not a new idea, but I've had the idea of creating a driver
> portage system that contains information firstly, detection secondly and

In other words, what lspci/pciutils does?

> configuration scripts and tools thirdly.

This is (sort of) what Redhat's kudzu is meant to do - detect new
hardware and automatically configure it for you, more or less like what
MS Windows does.

> the idea is to enable admins and users to quickly learn if their device is
> suported, find out what device they actualy have and maybe get the right
> configuration, kernel modules and scripts installed.

Again, basically what Kudzu does.  To be honest, way back when I used
Redhat and/or Mandrake, I found the automatic hardware detection
terribly annoying.

> I just know someone has to be working on this, because it seems like such a
> worthwhile project to enable Linux to escape the hardware headache monica it
> has too readly acuired.

I suspect Redhat's automatic detection programs annoyed more experienced
linux users (i.e. admins) than it helped; most admins are able to run
lspci in order to see what kernel configuration/modules they'll need.


If you really want to do something to help the "hardware headache" (I'm 
not sure what 'monica' means - I couldn't find it in any dictionary) - 
help the linux kernel developers to actually support more hardware more 
stably (like Serial ATA, ACPI suspend-to-ram, etc.)  The "hardware 
headache" doesn't come from having trouble identifying cards, it comes 
from having to be nearly on the bleeding edge of kernel development for 
support of any hardware less than a year old.


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-- Jason Rhinelander
-- Gossamer Threads, Inc.


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