Re: [gentoo-dev] GUi installer brainstorm

[Geert Bevin]

On Mon, 2002-01-07 at 15:24, John Stalker wrote:
> I have one suggestion regarding hardware detection/configuration.
> Doing things automatically is not easy--this is something even

We really don't want to do stuff automatically, however auto detecting
hardware configurations might be a good feature to help a user with the
identification of his/her system. People that install gentoo tend to
know their computer well, but not necessarely all aspects and components
of it.

> big distributions get wrong frequently.  There are several options
> intermediate between Windows-style automatic configuration and the
> current extreme do-it-yourself approach.  One which involves minimal
> work is to use ebuild scripts to do all the work.  For example I
> could write an ebuild for Epson 777 printers (USB version) which
> would download the upp files, check dependencies--in this case
> ghostscript and a USB controller package--maybe check /usr/src/linux/.config
> and warn if kernel support is missing.  It could also use lpadmin
> to configure the printer, but maybe this shouldn't be automated.

The installation process has not (yet) the intent of creating a fully
customized system. The first step will be to aid the user to go from the
build cd to a first running and custom compiled gentoo system.

> If everyone who had trouble geetting a device working under gentoo
> wrote an ebuild for that device then new users could save a lot of
> time getting their systems working.  One advantage is that you could
> use whatever UI front end you write for choosing and installing
> applications to configure hardware as well.  I don't see much point
> in hardware detection at the moment; I think most new users know
> what hardware they have.

-- 
Geert Bevin
the Leaf sprl/bvba
"Use what you need"           Pierre Theunisstraat 1/47
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