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

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Tue Apr 29 20:53:27 UTC 2008


On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 12:19 AM, Andrew Farris <lordmorgul at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Did you install from Live CD or a DVD?  I think that might be a clear
> distinction to be made on that one, but it would probably be best to have
> those drivers just get into the install by default.  But.. the unwritten
> rule I think is primarily for X, video, keyboards, input, etc, I don't think
> printers/scanners/cameras are really included in that.

In fact I believe the printer config stuff actually has hooks in it to
install needed packages for some things already.
System-config-printer on F8 requires pirut for a reason.  I don't know
if the s-c-printer in F9 has reestablished those hooks against
packagekit or not. Nor do I know exactly which s-c-printer
interactions invoked pirut in F8.

Basically the rule has been include drivers for any hardware that
could be necessary to interact with the default desktop configuration,
even if hardware changes between boots, so that you can login and use
the packaging system to install additional things.  There is a certain
level of functionality which must work regardless of hardware changes
to make use of the system for further packaging changes.  Obviously
video drivers and network drivers fall within that scope of 'rule'
whereas printers and scanners do not.

-jef




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