Fedora 8 ideas

[Hans de Goede]

Arthur Pemberton wrote:
> On 6/7/07, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
>> Le jeudi 07 juin 2007 à 12:20 -0500, Arthur Pemberton a écrit :
>> > On 6/7/07, Nicolas Mailhot <nicolas.mailhot at laposte.net> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Le Jeu 7 juin 2007 17:37, Jarod Wilson a écrit :
>> > > > Bill Nottingham wrote:
>> > > >> Goede, J.W.R. de (j.w.r.degoede at hhs.nl) said:
>> > >
>> > > >> What cards is this useful for that we don't ship firmware
>> > > >> for? Anything other than bcm43xx and ralink?
>> > > >
>> > > > A number of dvb and v4l devices also require firmware that we don't
>> > > > ship.
>> > >
>> > > And alsa devices
>> > >
>> > > But that's because historically we've never shipped firmware, not
>> > > because anyone looked hard recently and decided we could not ship
>> > > them.
>> > >
>> > > Please try to get the firmware in-distro before focusing on a 
>> download
>> > > helper.
>>
>> > I have felt the pain of no firmware installed for an alsa device. 2-3
>> > hours wasted. It would have been nice if I at least knew firmware was
>> > needed.
>>
>> Alsa is mostly a case of "someone needs to poke RH Legal to check the
>> alsa firmware dumps can be packaged (and if not go ask the hadrware
>> vendors for permission)"
> 
> 
> After 2hrs trying to figure out why the device didn't work, it took me
> an hour to find the firmware at the bottom of the page.
> 

Yeah, I think the least we need is an gui applet which looks for missing 
firmware messages in the logs, alerts the user and explains things to him, 
including a link to a wiki page, with links to various download locations for 
various devices. This applet ofcourse needs a do not nag again checkbox :)

Regards,

Hans