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Hardware Configuration Tools for Linux?
Uttles asks: "I recently installed Mandrake 8.1 on my machine at home and as a Linux Newbie I have been having trouble getting all of my hardware to perform correctly. The Mandrake distribution comes with a config tool called HardDrake but I have not found it very useful. It displays every piece of hardware, but it doesn't give you the option to install or configure drivers for that hardware. In fact, the only functionality it has is a "run config tool" button that for some devices launches a configuration application. I have been told that Red Hat and other distributions have similar tools, and none are very powerful. So now I am asking Slashdot: What is the best hardware configuration tool, either GUI or text based, for Linux systems?"
Although nothing beats doing it by hand, I've had most success with RedHat's kudzu. It is run by default when you boot (it prints "Detecting new hardware...") and if it detects new hardware, you'll get prompted for the configuration. USB, video cards, hard drives, everything gets detected. Once, I changed a video card for another identical one. Kudzu told me that he hadn't been fooled, and asked me if I wanted to change the configuration. Mandrake's tool is based on RedHat's kudzu, and should act pretty much the same.
Even though detection is top-notch, configuration still isn't. Video cards, sound cards, hard drives, mouse & keyboard, network interfaces and other such common peripherals are handled fine, but if you want to do more than that, you'll have to fire up a text editor.
One thing you'll enjoy though: once the configuration is done, you'll never have to fiddle with it until you change hardware.