Solus Releases Linux Driver Management 1.0

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Solus Releases Linux Driver Management 1.0

The Solus Project this week released Linux Driver Management 1.0, a library created by this innovative Linux distribution for enumerating system components and detecting matches between said components and packages/drivers providing additional functionality...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Driver-Management-1.0

[Gibb]

First Linux steam integration, now driver management. Solus being one of the newest distros contributing to Linux in making Linux experience more user friendly. Great job guys! Your distro is taking it to the next level!

[KRiloshart]

Solus is doing things that should have been done by major distros with resources like Ubuntu years ago. I like how solus doesn't polarize the community I wish Ubuntu had this simple sense.

[aksdb]

Solus is doing things that should have been done by major distros with resources like Ubuntu years ago. I like how solus doesn't polarize the community I wish Ubuntu had this simple sense.

Ubuntu was already offering me a driver manager where I could simply switch from MESA to Nvidia or AMD binary drivers.
As far as I remember SUSE Linux has similar capabilities with YAST.

Anyway, nice that Solus offers that simplicity now as well. That's currently the only distribution that might lure me away from my long term relationship with ArchLinux ;-)

[Vistaus]

Ubuntu was already offering me a driver manager where I could simply switch from MESA to Nvidia or AMD binary drivers.
As far as I remember SUSE Linux has similar capabilities with YAST.

But it was not offering you that stuff for other hardware components, like input devices for example. Solus does now with Linux Driver Management.

[duby229]

So, I don't get it, I don't understand the dilemma. If a package for a device driver exists you just install the package.... So what is this thing? Like a limited scope package manager frontend? Is it just an enumerator?

[ikey_solus]

So, I don't get it, I don't understand the dilemma. If a package for a device driver exists you just install the package.... So what is this thing? Like a limited scope package manager frontend? Is it just an enumerator?

And lets say you're a new user - you're going to need to know what package is relevant for your hardware - if at all. Many users will end up installing the wrong thing, or not installing anything at all, and this leads to an incredibly poor user experience. Additionally, an OS should just know how to look after itself. If i plug a new device in and it needs drivers, my OS should tell me, I shouldn't need to hunt down arcane incantations for the terminal from some wiki.

This itself does not provide **any** frontend, it provides tooling and a library for distros to integrate into their existing tools and software centers (or new ones) and drop some technical debt for a shared solution among all distros, On top of that it throws in some extra capabilities, like proper classification, plugins, hotplug events, device tree encapsulation, etc, to be trivial for anyone to use. It makes no host assumptions and allows anyone to bolt on driver + hardware enabling with very little effort, and allows folks to move away from the temptations of forks-of-forks-of-Jockey (which is very scope limited). Notably the library isn't tied to any distro or package manager.

Beyond that there is core support for GLX management as a distro hook to provide proper configuration of X for proprietary drivers and Optimus (Which will evolve beyond always-on PRIME in time.)

[Brophen]

Additionally, an OS should just know how to look after itself.

100 times this.

[duby229]

And lets say you're a new user - you're going to need to know what package is relevant for your hardware - if at all. Many users will end up installing the wrong thing, or not installing anything at all, and this leads to an incredibly poor user experience. Additionally, an OS should just know how to look after itself. If i plug a new device in and it needs drivers, my OS should tell me, I shouldn't need to hunt down arcane incantations for the terminal from some wiki.

This itself does not provide **any** frontend, it provides tooling and a library for distros to integrate into their existing tools and software centers (or new ones) and drop some technical debt for a shared solution among all distros, On top of that it throws in some extra capabilities, like proper classification, plugins, hotplug events, device tree encapsulation, etc, to be trivial for anyone to use. It makes no host assumptions and allows anyone to bolt on driver + hardware enabling with very little effort, and allows folks to move away from the temptations of forks-of-forks-of-Jockey (which is very scope limited). Notably the library isn't tied to any distro or package manager.

Beyond that there is core support for GLX management as a distro hook to provide proper configuration of X for proprietary drivers and Optimus (Which will evolve beyond always-on PRIME in time.)

Well, I totally agree with you on your stance as far as it concerns non-enthusiast linux users. But I wouldn't give up on wiki documentation for more advanced stuff, and I wouldn't discourage any user from educating themselves from sources like wiki documentation.

EDIT: I've been reading in the mean time as well and I think I have a better understanding what this driver manager is. In a simplified scenario, a user can just plug in a device, and the driver will be installed, any important applications it needs, any profiles that need symlinked all get taken care of. And it's all just from the act of plugging in the device. Does that sound like a scenario that would be correct?

[ikey_solus]

Well, I totally agree with you on your stance as far as it concerns non-enthusiast linux users. But I wouldn't give up on wiki documentation for more advanced stuff, and I wouldn't discourage any user from educating themselves from sources like wiki documentation.

Oh absolutely, it doesn't excuse us from having documentation

EDIT: I've been reading in the mean time as well and I think I have a better understanding what this driver manager is. In a simplified scenario, a user can just plug in a device, and the driver will be installed, any important applications it needs, any profiles that need symlinked all get taken care of. And it's all just from the act of plugging in the device. Does that sound like a scenario that would be correct?

Technically you can do that, but we're going to do it in Solus via a notification system. User clicks the notification (which persists) which'll open the Software Center, which will in turn show the devices to be configured/installed. With the way that we do packaging of drivers, we expect them to be effectively zero configuration from the user side (and distros like Fedora also do the same kind of thing here). So basically it becomes a confirmation step from the notification, and then the user is sorted.

Beauty of course is that its entirely up to the distros/authors how they make use of the library and what those steps look like