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

Chris Snook csnook at redhat.com
Tue Apr 29 19:27:34 UTC 2008


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




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