[Kde-hardware-devel] KDE (Linux hardware) issues

[Alexander Antoniades]

Hi all, you asked for input so I thought I'd put in my 0.02$ as requested on 
the announcement. I'd just like to put out a couple of ideas/questions on the 
offhand chance you haven't thought of them (doubtful, but you never know). :)

1) The biggest problem with most of the hardware interaction issues with Linux 
is that projects like HAL Device Manager is that they offer information, but 
no way to rectify the problem. I know that Hal Device Manager was made that 
way by design, but this makes it relatively useless, so the first issue is I 
hope any type of device manager style applications provide a way to actually 
change or rectify hardware problems as opposed to simply stating what the 
system sees.
From my experience having to deal with that OS that runs on 90% of the worlds 
computers everyday, the main use of a device manager style application is to 
see if the OS sees the right hardware and to sometimes change drivers in the 
case of mis-identification, or drop to a generic driver in the case of a 
driver not working correctly.
This is my main shortcoming with Linux these days and would go a long way to 
help those of us who try to evangelize and expand Linux's base.

2) What about integration with any existing projects? In particular I was 
thinking about Ubuntu's hardware database and YaST. I know YaST is a whole 
backend, but components like SAX2 are GPL and seem like they would go a long 
way towards making X (which I assume would be a necessary prerequisite to KDE 
on all platforms) easier to manage.

3) One more wish (which isn't done by any OS I know of) would be the ability 
to show all the drivers the currently installed KDE system. This would help 
for in the event of moving the hard drive to another system or switching out 
hardware the ability to anticipate the difficulty of any change or when 
making upgrade decisions.

4) Lastly, for those of us that don't have programming skills, but have access 
to a wide array of hardware I would suggest you plan on releasing live CDs to 
help us assist in any hardware information gathering as I'm sure you'll get 
as much information as you can handle that way.

I realize these are generally pretty obvious, but I wanted to make sure I 
offered them up for you since the project is just starting.

Thank you for addressing this weakness in KDE and I look forward to your 
progress!

Sander