Installing and configuring new drivers is a pain! But what if there were a program for Linux that could read drivers packaged in a special form that had the driver and special info on how to install it, and it installed and configured it automatically? I guess I mean something like rpm''s, except just for drivers and much better. It could automatically detect old drivers, remove them, find any config files that needed editing, edit them, basically do whatever. Hopefully it''d be a standard tool, not just something only one distro has, so that hopefully all Linux driver makers would support it. Good idea? Bad idea? Is it possible? What what?

Anything that reduces the user hostility of the user environment seems like a great idea to me!

i think a user-friendly environment is a great thing... as long as it's not like microsoft's 'user friendly' !

there should always be the possibility to do everything by hand, even if it could cause trouble, if anyone doesn't know, what he's doing.
I (for myself) know, that i know what i'm doing... so nothing should be thrown in my way (like MS-Win32 always did...) !

what i want to say is : installers are a great thing, as long as they WORK CORRECTLY... and if not, one should still be ABLE to do everything by hand...

one very annoying thing about microsoft & drivers i once had :
my mouse was recognized as PS/2, although it was a serial mouse... it didn't work at all & i was not able to delete the driver for the PS/2 mouse... if i did, at the next bootup, windows 'found a new PS/2' mouse & installed the driver... the only possibility was to install the serial driver by hand & have two drivers running... of course, this was causing conflicts & under some circumstances, the mouse didn't move any more, so i had to reboot... THAT F...... ANNOYING ! please... no such 'user friendliness' for linux !

everything else (installers & co) are a damn good idea... as long as i still have the possibility to do it without !

[edit:]
one more thing... i've already thought about writing some 'user-friendly'-stuff for my box, before, so if you got some good ideas, maybe we could talk about them & maybe realize some... we might even find some more people to help...

[edited by - uNiQue0815 on September 21, 2002 2:34:47 PM]

Installing drivers? on linux?

I call that a kernel recompile, and people have liked that for ages.

Only "drivers" that aren''t in-kernel that I can think of are graphics cards like nvidia and ati

i didn''t really just think about driver installation... more about installers/configuration programs for every purpose. i didn''t have any trouble installing any driver, so far, but i think it''s often a pain-in-the-ass to install certain software... and i don''t like .rpm/.deb/.whatever packages too much...

AND there should always be a list of ALL dependencies for a program. (that''s not about installers, just a general thing...)

it would be great, if there was a program to install stuff, telling you what might be needed, lets you specify a destination directory (without that command-line-stuff) and just installs the software.
maybe one''ll even be able to choose, which components should be installed and which not...

and comfortable programs to change (system-)settings by modifying config-files... but there should always still be the possibility to change all settings by hand (i really love plain-text configuration files !)

there must be much more comfort in using linux/unix to get more people to use it !

quote:

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Original post by Anonymous Poster
Installing drivers? on linux?

I call that a kernel recompile, and people have liked that for ages.

Only "drivers" that aren''t in-kernel that I can think of are graphics cards like nvidia and ati

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Hmm, I thought that a modular kernel solved this problem? I know that most of my drivers are modules that are loaded at runtime (sound, mouse, network card, modem, graphics, and more).

I smell a Sourceforge project!

But seriously, i don''t think i''m good enough to really do this myself. The only programming I''ve done for Linux was using SDL, so I don''t think that really counts.

But here''s some thoughts:

Tool would have two parts: command line and GUI. Command line could be used without GUI for folks that liked the power and simplicity of using a command line. GUI would use the command line tool to do the heavy duty stuff, but would include handy stuff like wizards.

To play the devil''s advocate, what''s so bad about the way Windows installs stuff? Download a .exe, run it, tell it where to put the stuff (if the default location ain''t where it should be) and install it. Poof. Why can''t Linux be more like that? What''s up with this .rpm stuff? Why don''t I have any control over where stuff is installed?

think, you can specify a destination directory for everything installed... dunno for sure... read the man...

there''s nothing wrong about the Windows installation procedure. the only thing that''s wrong about windows, is that it doesn''t give you full control about anything...
and the sh..ty registry is something really awful...

i never had any problems installing drivers... only software installation from source is (almost) always very painful...

that''s where an installer should come in...

and there should be some progs/GUIs to configure a lot of stuff...

As far as configuring general stuff, I''ve never had much problem. I use Mandrake, btw. They have loads of configuration stuff.

The only things I''ve had trouble configuring were Xinerama (KDE, Mandrake, X, or something REALLY doesn''t want me using dual monitors!) Wine, Alsa (before I discovered how to set it up using Mandrake) and Samba. I''ve tried that web browser based config thing for Samba (forgot what its called) but it seemed as hard to configure as Samba itself. Defeats the purpose IMHO.

But i try my best to stay away from installing stuff from source. I''ve never been able to succesfully compile and install anything from source, except Alsa that ONE time.

Anyhow, I''d be happy if there was some open source answer to InstallShield.

Mandrake seems like its got installation and basic configuration nearly perfected, but it''s still not Grandma friendly. We gotta get Linux so easy our Grannies can use it, and a tech can still come over and go into some kind of Expert mode and fix it (if needed), instead of fighting with it for hours like they would with Windows.

Sorry if it seems like i''m jumping around all over the place. I guess i''m brainstorming or something. Not sure though...

off topic...
and i''m sorry if it''s a stupid question.
but i never understood the difference between UNIX, and Linux?
also is Unix: BSD and X-windows?
because they seem, from what i''ve seen, like Windows.

so basically the whole Linux/Unix difference just boggles me.
could someone be so kind as to explain... please