Bill Nottingham wrote:
Goede, J.W.R. de (j.w.r.degoede@xxxxxx) said:
2 Firmware buddy
================
Here is what I would like to see (and would be willing to
write code for):
1) A firmware load request is send to userspace
2) When the userspace firmware helper cannot find this
firmware, it logs this to a missing-firmware file.
3) When the user logs in, a firmware-helper-applet runs
4) If there is missing firmware and a working internet
connection, the applet becomes active, otherwise it
exits
5) The applet looksup the firmware name in a table which
matches it to a device-identifier.
6) The applet looksup manufacturers + productnames (as seen
on the box/outside) of device-identifier devices.
7) The applet shows a gui to the user explaining that
firmware is needed for his XXXXX (ex. wireless card) to
work, and asks him to select the manufacturer and
product
of his XXXXX.
8) The applet downloads the windows-driver from the
manufacturers websites and runs a special (per driver)
shell script to extract the firmware
9) The user is told to reboot (or do something else to
get the device re-initialised).
What cards is this useful for that we don't ship firmware
for? Anything other than bcm43xx and ralink?
I originally came to this idea after going through some pain to get my SIL card
(prism 2 softmac, driver prism_pci) to work. So add prism cards to that, notice
that I bought that card very recently, so those are still in the stores.
Also aren't there many many ralink + bcm cards, you make it sound like those
are rare.
3 plugin buddy
==============
Like codec buddy, but then for firefox plugins. Why?
because firefox plugin find service doesn't undserstand to
install nspluginwrapper (needs to get into Fedora) and then
flash on x86_64. Nor knows it to change the selinux type of
realplayer to get it to work with our default enabled
selinux policy.
<die realplayer die>
So, *if* we install nspluginwrapper by default, does firefox
then do the right thing?
Nope, I tried that.
5 proprietary software install helper
=====================================
Yes you read it correctly, I'm suggesting the inclusion of
a "proprietary software install helper" which gives users a
gui which will help them to install popular and free as in
beer software.
Many of my collegues who I try to convert to Linux have
been complaining about the pain to get for example vmware
to run, this is when I first came up with this idea, to
pretty much discard it the next day.
Then today I read this article:
http://www.howtoforge.com/the_perfect_desktop_fedora7
(which contains many badness) and I noticed again a lott
of workarounds/hacks to get proprietary software to run.
Lets face it quite a few of our users (and quite a few of
us too I guess) want to atleast try out some proprietary
software, and installing that on a quick developing
cutting edge distro like Fedora is a pain.
Problems with selinux are only one part of this. If we want
users to stop disabling selinux, an helper program which
fixes selinux types for these will hopefully lead to less
users disabling selinux.
So do we want this? on one hand we do not endorse / promote
proprietary software. OTOH some (many?) of our users use or
atleast want to try one or 2 proprietary programs. I think
in the name of userfriendlyness, that it is a good idea to
make this easier for them.
Suggestion: if this is done make the program start witha
dialog that we do not endorse this, bla bla bla. When a
propietary app gets selected, first popup a dialog
advocating free alternatives (qemu for vmware, evince for
acroread, etc.) with an install + launch button for the
free alternative.
I'm not really thrilled about working on this because
of a) the insinuation, at least, of moderate endorsement
b) the fact that it seems it would be going down a rathole
of chasing-the-fixes-for-each-new-package.
I'm not asking anyone to be thrilled about working on this, what I'm asking is
do others agree this might have (some) added value for Fedora, and more in
general would such a beast be acceptable?
Regards,
Hans
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