What the status of the unwritten rule "install all device drivers by default"

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Hi all!

In the past we IIRC had unwritten rules like "disk space is cheap thus 
install all device drivers by default" and "enable all device drivers by 
default in the configs if that doesn't do any harm, as that way devices 
will 'just work' without any manual configuration by the user".

Do we still follow those unwritten rules? I just installed a HP 
printer/scanner on a system with a fresh Fedora 9 preview install and 
had to manually install the libsane-hpaio package to make the scanner 
work. Is that intended behavior or would we consider this a bug?

Cu
knurd

[Andrew Farris]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>  Hi all!
>  
>  In the past we IIRC had unwritten rules like "disk space is cheap thus 
>  install all device drivers by default" and "enable all device drivers by 
>  default in the configs if that doesn't do any harm, as that way devices 
>  will 'just work' without any manual configuration by the user".
>  
>  Do we still follow those unwritten rules? I just installed a HP 
>  printer/scanner on a system with a fresh Fedora 9 preview install and 
>  had to manually install the libsane-hpaio package to make the scanner 
>  work. Is that intended behavior or would we consider this a bug? 
Did you install from Live CD or a DVD?  I think that might be a clear 
distinction to be made on that one, but it would probably be best to have those 
drivers just get into the install by default.  But.. the unwritten rule I think 
is primarily for X, video, keyboards, input, etc, I don't think 
printers/scanners/cameras are really included in that.

-- 
Andrew Farris <lordmorgul(a)gmail.com&gt; www.lordmorgul.net
  gpg 0x8300BF29 fingerprint 071D FFE0 4CBC 13FC 7DEB  5BD5 5F89 8E1B 8300 BF29

What's the status of the unwritten rule "install all device drivers by default"

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 24.04.2008 10:19, Andrew Farris wrote:
>  Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > In the past we IIRC had unwritten rules like "disk space is cheap thus 
> > install all device drivers by default" and "enable all device drivers by 
> > default in the configs if that doesn't do any harm, as that way devices 
> > will 'just work' without any manual configuration by the user".
> > Do we still follow those unwritten rules? I just installed a HP 
> > printer/scanner on a system with a fresh Fedora 9 preview install and 
> > had to manually install the libsane-hpaio package to make the scanner 
> > work. Is that intended behavior or would we consider this a bug?
>  Did you install from Live CD or a DVD? 
Normal install using anaconda from install-DVD (x86-64)

>   I think that might be a clear 
>  distinction to be made on that one, but it would probably be best to have those 
>  drivers just get into the install by default.  
+1

>  But.. the unwritten rule I think 
>  is primarily for X, video, keyboards, input, etc, I don't think 
>  printers/scanners/cameras are really included in that. 
Well, most (all?) the other scanner drivers are available, so omitting 
one/a few without a good reason (at least there isn't one afaics) 
doesn't make much sense IMHO.

CU
knurd

What's the status of the unwritten rule "install all device drivers by default"

[Andrew Farris]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>  On 24.04.2008 10:19, Andrew Farris wrote:
> > But.. the unwritten rule I think is primarily for X, video, keyboards, 
> > input, etc, I don't think printers/scanners/cameras are really 
> > included in that.
>  
>  Well, most (all?) the other scanner drivers are available, so omitting 
>  one/a few without a good reason (at least there isn't one afaics) 
>  doesn't make much sense IMHO. 
Well in that case, probably should file a bug on it.

-- 
Andrew Farris <lordmorgul(a)gmail.com&gt; www.lordmorgul.net
  gpg 0x8300BF29 fingerprint 071D FFE0 4CBC 13FC 7DEB  5BD5 5F89 8E1B 8300 BF29

[Jef Spaleta]

On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:19 AM, Andrew Farris <lordmorgul(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>   Did you install from Live CD or a DVD?  I think that might be a
> clear
>  distinction to be made on that one, but it would probably be best to have
>  those drivers just get into the install by default.  But.. the unwritten
>  rule I think is primarily for X, video, keyboards, input, etc, I don't think
>  printers/scanners/cameras are really included in that. 
In fact I believe the printer config stuff actually has hooks in it to
install needed packages for some things already.
System-config-printer on F8 requires pirut for a reason.  I don't know
if the s-c-printer in F9 has reestablished those hooks against
packagekit or not. Nor do I know exactly which s-c-printer
interactions invoked pirut in F8.

Basically the rule has been include drivers for any hardware that
could be necessary to interact with the default desktop configuration,
even if hardware changes between boots, so that you can login and use
the packaging system to install additional things.  There is a certain
level of functionality which must work regardless of hardware changes
to make use of the system for further packaging changes.  Obviously
video drivers and network drivers fall within that scope of 'rule'
whereas printers and scanners do not.

-jef

[Lubomir Kundrak]

On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 09:47 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>  Hi all!
>  
>  In the past we IIRC had unwritten rules like "disk space is cheap thus 
>  install all device drivers by default" and "enable all device drivers by 
>  default in the configs if that doesn't do any harm, as that way devices 
>  will 'just work' without any manual configuration by the user".
>  
>  Do we still follow those unwritten rules? I just installed a HP 
>  printer/scanner on a system with a fresh Fedora 9 preview install and 
>  had to manually install the libsane-hpaio package to make the scanner 
>  work. Is that intended behavior or would we consider this a bug? 
I'm wondering whether we'll have some "hal - PackageKit - something"
magic to provide you with a nice notification bubble that suggest you
click a link to install the required package.

-- 
Lubomir Kundrak (Red Hat Security Response Team)

[Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams]

On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 11:28 +0200, Lubomir Kundrak wrote:
>  I'm wondering whether we'll have some "hal - PackageKit
> - something"
>  magic to provide you with a nice notification bubble that suggest you
>  click a link to install the required package. 
If only that project had been accepted for the GSoC...

-- 
Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ivazqueznet(a)gmail.com&gt;

PLEASE don't CC me; I'm already subscribed

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 24.04.2008 11:28, Lubomir Kundrak wrote:
>  On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 09:47 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > In the past we IIRC had unwritten rules like "disk space is cheap thus 
> > install all device drivers by default" and "enable all device drivers by 
> > default in the configs if that doesn't do any harm, as that way devices 
> > will 'just work' without any manual configuration by the user".
> > Do we still follow those unwritten rules? I just installed a HP 
> > printer/scanner on a system with a fresh Fedora 9 preview install and 
> > had to manually install the libsane-hpaio package to make the scanner 
> > work. Is that intended behavior or would we consider this a bug?
>  I'm wondering whether we'll have some "hal - PackageKit - something"
>  magic to provide you with a nice notification bubble that suggest you
>  click a link to install the required package. 
The idea was brought up multiple times in the past on this list IIRC, 
but often was shot down with "disk space is cheap; it's better to just 
install all drivers/packages by default and most people will be happy".

And I have to agree with this option -- (Open)Suse provides such a 
function in Yast, but it multiple times drove me mad in the past years 
when I had to look up the install-media (which of course often was not 
at hand and nowhere to be found) or get a internet connection running 
(which requires some work as well and sometimes is hard or impossible 
when you are traveling¹) when configuring a device for the first time.

Most drivers are part of the kernel or installed by default in any case 
-- thus I tend to say it's less work for everyone to just install the 
other drivers as well by default instead of working out a (complicated?) 
framework to install drivers on demand.

CU
knurd

¹ -- okay, that's unlikely in the case of a scanner, but for network 
hardware it's a real problem

[Rahul Sundaram]

Lubomir Kundrak wrote:
>  On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 09:47 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > Hi all!
> >
> > In the past we IIRC had unwritten rules like "disk space is cheap thus 
> > install all device drivers by default" and "enable all device drivers by 
> > default in the configs if that doesn't do any harm, as that way devices 
> > will 'just work' without any manual configuration by the user".
> >
> > Do we still follow those unwritten rules? I just installed a HP 
> > printer/scanner on a system with a fresh Fedora 9 preview install and 
> > had to manually install the libsane-hpaio package to make the scanner 
> > work. Is that intended behavior or would we consider this a bug?
>  
>  I'm wondering whether we'll have some "hal - PackageKit - something"
>  magic to provide you with a nice notification bubble that suggest you
>  click a link to install the required package. 
It's very much possible to do that.

http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2008/04/21/insanity/

Rahul

[Jesse Keating]

On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 09:47 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>  libsane-hpaio 
I seem to remember some of the hp stuff being left off this list as at
the time they would drag in QT and a host of other things which wouldn't
typically be there on a default (GNOME) install.  That may have changed
in recent time and thus the HP stuff should get added into the default
set.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Fedora -- Freedom² is a feature!

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 25.04.2008 01:44, Jesse Keating wrote:
>  On Thu, 2008-04-24 at 09:47 +0200, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
> > libsane-hpaio
>  I seem to remember some of the hp stuff being left off this list as at
>  the time they would drag in QT and a host of other things which wouldn't
>  typically be there on a default (GNOME) install.  That may have changed
>  in recent time and thus the HP stuff should get added into the default
>  set. 
Afaics that stuff is in hplip-gui these days

$ repoquery hplip-gui --requires | grep -i qt
PyQt
$ repoquery hplip libsane-hpaio --requires | grep -i qt
$

BTW, I filed a bug in between:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=444016

Related issue I noticed while at it: I'm wondering if the split in hplip 
and libsane-hpaio is worth the trouble in any case, as hplip tracks in 
sane-backends-libs (which again tracks in sane-backends) while 
libsane-hpaio itself is quite small:

$ repoquery hplip  --requires | grep -i sane
libsane.so.1()(64bit)
$ repoquery -qi libsane-hpaio | grep Size
Size        : 58776

CU
knurd

[Chris Snook]

Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>  Hi all!
>  
>  In the past we IIRC had unwritten rules like "disk space is cheap thus 
>  install all device drivers by default" and "enable all device drivers by 
>  default in the configs if that doesn't do any harm, as that way devices 
>  will 'just work' without any manual configuration by the user".
>  
>  Do we still follow those unwritten rules? I just installed a HP 
>  printer/scanner on a system with a fresh Fedora 9 preview install and 
>  had to manually install the libsane-hpaio package to make the scanner 
>  work. Is that intended behavior or would we consider this a bug?
>  
>  Cu
>  knurd
>   
If we automatically installed all the userspace hardware enablement packages, 
the dependency cascade would exceed the size of a CD.  The kernel has the USB 
infrastructure you need built in, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

Personally, I think it would be wonderful if we had a hardware setup wizard that 
would recommend additional packages like this, but I don't think it's a bug that 
we omit libsane-hpaio from the default install.

-- Chris