On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 4:17 PM, Adam Williamson <awilliam(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2010-04-21 at 09:40 -0400, Colin Walters wrote:
> This looks like a good start. I think the way this kind of thing
> should work in general is that the system detects if you have the
> hardware, and dynamically installs support for it. We'd need some
> database mapping things like USB ids to packages. Networking is an
> exception; we should include as many drivers/tools for
> networking-related functionality as possible so that the system can be
> bootstrapped.
>
> Basically: if you have a GPS chip, gypsy gets installed and runs. If
> you don't, it doesn't.
I've been banging a gong about something like that for years; right now
it's much too hard to know what you're supposed to do to make
$RANDOM_GADGET that you just plugged in actually work, but we can hardly
install the software for every USB device under the sun by default.
There's a clear need for something like this. Really it's just a kind of
widget that sits between udev and PackageKit, I think.
Dumb question.... Can't the usb printer autoinstall just be extended
to support other hardware? Based on usb/pci ids?
Peter