I have proposed the JWuN project for Google Summer of Code and wanted to get the ideas of everyone, mentor or not about what hardware could be used software could we worry about in this project. The abstract and information of what I submitted should be enough to give you an idea of what it will do... ---ABSTRACT So many distros, Fedora, Red Hat, Mandriva, Ubuntu, try to create a distro that covers as many bases as possible when it comes to the hardware and software. Now I feel that the Linux kernel is getting very good at covering almost all the bases when it comes to hardware. It's amazing to install Linux and have every driver already installed and ready. But what about software, what software do we have to help with that. we can't include all that software that is used to access that hardware. It would fill the entire computer. It tends to cause confusing when a user doesn't know whether or not they have bluetooth when they keep seeing the bluetooth preferences program in the System Menu like in Ubuntu. What about scanning. When a scanner is installed the hardware/driver side is taken care of but many distros don't have a scanning software installed by default. Even if the user knows that they have no software to access it, they don't know what software out of so many packages to install. They have to talk to the community of users and formulate an answer out of opinions. THE IDEA: I think we could create a software that can look at their hardware on the computer and come to a conclusion of what hardware they have and what software would be good to install. Ideas could include the following: *USB scanner : Xsane *BlueTooth Adapter : OpenObexFTP, blue proximity, ganyremote *USB Remote: elisa, ganyremote *USB Webcam : Cheese, or aMSN or others this could be asked. *MightyMouse : Xorg Changes for the side scrolling and squeeze button *Fingure Print reader : thinkFinger ( and inform that there is no gui based setup and point to a link for more help) ---DETAILS I could start be creating production documentation talking about what the scope and goal of the program would be. This would be done along with my mentor and would hopefully be complete even before I can start coding. I could cover: *What hardware could we cover. *What ways can we retrieve information about the computer. For example, should we use lspci or simple look in udev, lsusb or all of them. Or perhaps we could simple ask the user what hardware they have too. *What scope would this program cover. *How would this information about the computer be stored. For example, should I have this information sent to a central server or should this information just be guessed of manually entered by certain people. >From this information I would start to work over a mock program on a low fi paper prototype and test the program on subjects that use Linux and record their reactions. From these recorded film sessions I can create a gui that is not only easy to use but gets the job done. >From here, I start coding. I will be using python and pygtk for this part of the assignment and create a gui that matches the work I did in the low fi prototype. I hope to complete it with enough time to have a few people enter there hardware information and we test it to see if it's working properly. Other notes: This project is something that I know will need a lot of tender care far past what GSoC is paying. If I get this project I intend to make it a long term commitment. This would be a very powerful program that I can put on a CV. Not something I just drop. About Me: I am a Business Information Technology Student... I am president of the Linux Club at my school and am THE goto guy at my school for people needing help with their desktop Linux systems. I install linux on a new computer about 2 or 3 times a week. When people want, get, or already have hardware they want to work in Linux, I am their man. I programing in Python and use the GTK+ toolkits to making things look pretty. I take great concern in making a program user friendly and have studied courses that focus on this logic. I was in GSoC last year and successfuly created a program called PyStart. I have learned how to program A LOT better since then. I currently have one active project I am working on. It's just about at it's 1.0 stable release. It's called MeMaker. It makes SVG based avatars from user submited theme sets. These avatars can be exported into many formats and locations. For example, you can export to your Gmone "about me" picture. Our goal with this program is to create avatars that can be easily synced and created in many places at once. Please inform me if you have any other questions on the subject. :D --- Some things that came to mind with the program is using libhal rather than parsing all the information from programs like lshw, lspci, etc... I agree with that. I even had someone mention package kit which would make crossDistro work simpler in many ways. The biggest things I want to get from this email is some support from others that feel this idea can float and would be useful to Fedora and other Distros. Also if you like, you can jot down some hardware that has some software that is not included by default in fedora but could be a great advantage if they had that software. One big example is bluetooth could have blueproximity installed. What other ideas can you come up with? Regards, Jason Brower -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
