-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I didn't see this message until after the UDS session today, but I thought I'd explain quickly why my draft design <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareAndUpdatesSettings#drivers> isn't like the Device Manager in Windows.
Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote on 23/04/12 10:35: > > Den 23. april 2012 08:55, skrev Martin Pitt: >> >> Jo-Erlend Schinstad [2012-04-20 1:56 +0200]: >>> >>> If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a >>> "Hardware manager". >> >> That's exactly what I want to avoid. If anything, the UI should >> become easier, not more complex. Large trees with lots of >> technobabble and incomprehensible hardware parts names, >> properties, and drivers is just about the last thing we need to >> improve usability IMHO. :-) > > Right. I remember back in 1998 or something. I asked about drivers, > and people told me there's no need to think about that. The drivers > are built into the kernel. And for the most part, they were. > Fourteen years later, however, drivers are still an issue. Things > are improving. When 10.04 was released, I had to use proprietary > drivers for my Radeon HD. Now it's optional. I still choose to, > because they're so very much better than the built-in ones. > > Perhaps when 20.04 is released, all of these problems will have > been forgotten. In the meantime, we need to provide proprietary > drivers. As long as we have to provide proprietary drivers, we > should also show the Free Software drivers. It's a little > difficult for me to understand why anyone in the Ubuntu community > would disagree with this. > > ... First, because "We have to provide proprietary drivers" does not logically lead to "we should also show the Free Software drivers". And second, because no-one has provided use cases for it. A quick analogy. Last month on Reddit, someone suggested that Ubuntu should show -- in the Power settings on each computer -- whether the Hibernate function on that computer is (a) certified working, (b) reported working, (c) unknown, or (d) known bad. The problem with that suggestion was that any communication of states (a) or (b) would make sense only if you had a complete mental model of the battlefield -- only if you knew that there were some computers for which Hibernate works and some where it doesn't. Otherwise, it would look like random boasting: "Oh, by the way, this function works on your computer, just like thousands of other functions do". <http://www.reddit.com/r/fossworldproblems/comments/se3u6/ubuntu_1204_infringes_on_my_right_to_achieve_data/c4diyry?context=3> It's the same here. That there are thousands of devices that work well on Ubuntu is great. Yay kernel developers, and yay us. But it's the sort of victory that we celebrate amongst ourselves. We don't need to run the GUI equivalent of a ticker-tape parade, listing all the devices that work, to downplay the few that don't. (We do that on Ubuntu's Web site, but only so people can check compatibility *before* they install.) Microsoft's Device Manager exists because some devices have drivers that need to be downloaded from the Internet, and many devices have drivers that aren't made by Microsoft. So if Plug and Play goes wrong - -- whether through a failed Internet connection, or an incompetent vendor -- it is a legitimate troubleshooting use case to find the device and try reconfiguring it. In Ubuntu, driver configuration is useful only when you have a choice of drivers, and Ubuntu can't tell which will work best on your particular machine. Usually that's when at least one of the drivers is proprietary, but it doesn't have to be. Conceivably we could also list devices for which there are no proprietary drivers, but multiple maintained open-source drivers. That just doesn't often happen. Maybe after another 14 years kernel developers will decide that the current driver model doesn't scale, and switch to a model more like the Windows one. Or maybe there are other use cases for a full Device Manager. But right now, this isn't one. - -- mpt -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk+tlPYACgkQ6PUxNfU6ecr/FwCfcolht8WzQw2zOGOBgwl9Pv9L Ta4AnRz7iz5zmIOu9MVdDGXWNiVf8No8 =5anZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ubuntu-desktop mailing list ubuntu-desktop@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop
