Fedora 7

[Horst H. von Brand]

Arthur Pemberton <pemboa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/10/07, Horst H. von Brand <vonbrand at inf.utfsm.cl> wrote:
> [...]
> > [...]
> >
> > > All I'm asking for a Fedora blessed infrastructure to be put in place,
> > > not for any one person to be responsible for populating it
> >
> > This requires manpower (to check for junk, to clean up entries, to
> > discriminate among conclicting entries, ...). Ask the people at
> > <http://www.linuxprinting.org> if this is a trivial job. And printers are
> > outside the box, so it is /simple/ compared to all possible strange
> > interactions among in-box pieces.
> 
> I may be ignorant on the finer details, but between the outputs of
> lspci, and lsusb, how many dupplicates can their possibly be?

I've seen a WiFi card with a (somewhat) supported TI chipset which didn't
work at all, due to differences in the handling of firmware by the rest of
the card (or that was what we ended up suspecting, as firmware loading just
didn't work). lspci/lsusb saying something is no guarantee that the rest of
the card isn't screwed up beyond hope.

> While it may be non trivial to maintain linuxprinting.org it is a very
> useful resource for pre-purchase printer considerations.

Yes. Now multiply that job by 10 (WiFi cards, say, have a much shorter
lifespan than printers and there are much more companies making the stuff)
for each type of device out there, and you are in the ballpark of what this
requires.

> Google is a great resource, but it only goes so far.

A web page purporting to list all devices supported by Fedora will make
information materialize out of thin air exactly how? If it ain't in Google,
it doesn't exist...

But what do I know... set up the webpage and start collecting data. I'd
love to be proven wrong.

> I recently had to setup an older sound interface pci card on a fedora
> box I setup at work. And indiciations were bright that it was linux
> compatible and fully alsa supported. I did a locate and found the
> module already in the fedora kernel tree , i thought great.
> 
> 2-3 hours later I finally found out that the card needed firmware, not
> available in extras or core, and just barely mentioned on the driver's
> author's page.
> 
> It would have been nice to know that the kernel module is Fedora
> compatible, but the firmware (to make the device work) is not.

If the /author/ doesn't tell you that, how are the Fedora folks to know
about that minor detail?

> > > The benefit of this being that next time I'm buying hardware, I can
> > > scurry over to the db and check what the best options are.
> >
> > For higher-end stuff the data is usually at hand, for el-cheapo not (and
> > better stay away from that in any case).
> 
> I'm not sure what more one needs than the output of lspci, and lsusb,
> and dmesg...of course I could be missing something here.

lspci(8) mostly tells you the base chip in the card, and to get there you
have to install it somewhere sane. Won't work for buying a card by mail
order. And that is not enough, as other pieces/variations of the chip might
(or not) work.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                    Fono: +56 32 2654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria             +56 32 2654239
Casilla 110-V, Valparaiso, Chile               Fax:  +56 32 2797513