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Linux Hardware Detection Project
jesus writes "The crazy kiddies over at Linux Mandrake have started the Lothar Project . The goal is to make hardware detection and configuration easy. The code is in CVS and they need all sorts of different people and furry animals, so take a gander at the page, look at the pretty screenshots, and contribute to world domination. "
Isn't that what Microsoft does?
in the Boston area, at least. It stands for something like "Consumer Value Stores", or something equally un-memorable.
It's interesting that they're using GTK 1.2 for this instead of QT with their KDE past. I wonder if they're planning on changing their distribution to Gnome instead of KDE. (or continuing it at all at that with RedHat including KDE these days)
I have Mandrake 5.3 installed on a few systems and love it, they did a really nice job of giving you a useable, attractive desktop and UI right out of the box.
I sort of wish they would use QT for this stuff, but this might be one push which puts Gnome over the top. (though linuxconf is cool, it's also incredibly alpha right now, and might be TOO detailed for it's own good)
They do say on their page that they're looking for QT coders too, so maybe it'll be a joint effort, which is the best of both worlds IMO.
i've seen the usb project listed on linux.org
It's a gtk theme called Marble3d you can get it from the usual places. themes.org
To make an OSS project work, you need a workable code base so that the developers can play with the software and add their own little branches / features. Announcements and whining about donations will not get you anywhere.
Now shut up and write some code.
-- Anonymous Coward
$25- membership fee ? they don't think it's hard enough to get people to volunteer their time to a project that currently has little momentum ? What do they need the $$ for anyway ? Esp since they don't seem to be doing anything. .deb and in the process advertising his ignorance re the fact that RPM does almost all the same things ( apt-get is good if you are on a T1.... otherwise it's not so useful hey, what's this one patch limit ? dpkg is a pain for developers. of course Eric doesn't realise this since Laet haven't even got to the point where they are ready to start buildig a distribution ... ) ... ?
Good luck to Eric. Hope he has fun shaking his tin can and trumpeting the merits of
btw, how old is Eric again
-- Mister Coward
www.mozilla.org use it! find out more there.
Actually, I think that the fbcons drivers should eventually give you a 50/50 chance of having a "good" X display on startup :-)...
Daniel
The only other guys really on the map are Debian ( which not many new users use ) and slackware ( which doesn't get new users. only old timers use it AFAIK )
You can dispute the exact number but the fact remains that RPM is the defacto standard linux package format.
-- Mr Coward
actually, just use the PnP kernel support, and you don't (well, may not, depending on your specifics) even have to worry about the isapnptools. i haven't run that in months on my Debian/2.2.6 machine; kernel takes care of everything! (or am i misunderstanding how this works? at any rate, i don't have to run isapnptools manually...) "it just works."
by the way, real player G2 is starting to work pretty well in Wine... 8)
ANd what if you are running a server machine on old hardware and you don't want to waste the space or time to set up X? I think have a nice GUI is a good thing but only so long as you can use it outside of X as well. Shouldn't be too hard, the underlying code would be the same, just a different interface and stuff.
Look I'm a nerd too, I got a CS degree and
am also a artist, so I can see it from the
idiot perspective too.. I would say most programmers
are idiots about the world, and some people who are
idiots about computers know things about the world better.. How many Linux Nerds are so eager to do the service and install a OS for a friend, won't ask money for the favor, then when their friend wants help they say "read the FAQ's", that's not service that's irresponsibility or maybe its kindness? Before we can reveal this kindness to the world we should make it easier for the world to use it.. Some practitioners will never become experts at Linux, may never compile a kernel, don't feel bad about charging for what you know, its your gift, but making stuff easy for people is not wrong.. When was the last time you had to install a chip and flip a few switches to turn on your TV or microwave oven? This is the unneeded complexity Linux has , but if you know Unix its pretty simple, eh? I think before we can clear the mote from our brother's eye we need to clear the plank from our own, we need to see it from their point of view.. Linux needs to be simple to use, it needs some form of standard, it needs good
good man pages, it needs all of this.. I agree simplicity sucks, laziness sucks, Microsoft and ones ike them thrive on laziness, but they also thrive on stupidity.. We can make a stupid interface for the people at large, and when they realize what they are doing, they will get smarter.. Our biggest problems are not the OS we use but the real-world troubles surrounding us, first our community then those distant from us.. What is this I hear of two kids shooting 13 people dead in Colorado.. And all we can talk about is whether or not Linux is idiot free.. The deal is that Linux is not for just one group.. Some people
will never learn how to compile a kernel, but that doesn't mean they should go to hell..
I think Linux has a lot to offer the community at
large, and if you think its stupid, and it cramps your style.. Think about this, your attitude is what Bill Gates and others like him
value, the more he can make his OS look simple, efficient and easy to install/use, the more we lose.. Yes it means we deal with idiots, but we are not forced to help them, if you don't want to help, shut the hell up.. Let those who see a need, do what they see is their duty..
The development of another OS is the same as the development of
another mailer, of another compiler.. Its
a way to solve a problem and sometimes without access to other possibly better solutions.. The problem with
Microsoft is they started by making the systems
everyone uses impossible to deconstruct and fix or be made better, their arrogance has limited our success.. Before computers,
any mechanism (beit proprietary or whatever) could be taken apart, understood, fixed.. Software can be deconstructed
but the mechanism is much more complex, so complex it would take hundreds of programmers to determine what the original blue-prints look like..
What we need to do is develop a GUI based OS like Windows, but better, and based on open sourced software,
and guard against basing standards on proprietary ideas!! This OS must be the world dominator!! This OS
Linux could be the grand solution to this problem, but don't think in terms of what its been like for the past 20 years, computers are young Business and Capitalism is not.. Linux is anti-capitalism.. If capitalism isn't the striving force, what is? Maybe that should be defined, especially to new users.. I think the idea of a multi-OS platform is ambitious, but when do you think several companies are willing to share the same piece of pie? Never.. What's the solution? One OS? One OS with many applications that is completely configurable.. ITs democratic and communist, its not bounded by ideals.. Its free!!
Guess I won't be using it on my linux box with the CGA card installed. Bummer...
The window manager is fvwm2 (gnomified), in my opinion.
The theme is called insurrection.
look at http://fvwm2gnome.fluid.cx/
A happy linux user is a flameing linux user
Actually I have been hoping that the rising popularity and widespread use of Linux will finally be able to kill the while idea of Plug-n-Pray altogether. Sure it's great if it works but if it doesn't you're just screwed. And that is aside from the fact that jumperless cards are just a way for manufacturers to save a few cents on the card and make the software do a little more work.
Yes, we want to attract the masses but not at the cost of Linux's flexibility. User friendliness should only go as far as allowing the user to maintain complete control if necessary. In this case it is a moot point I suppose since you don't have to use this program to set up your hardware. But in the tradition of Linux I agree that it needs a nice non-X interface.
Leatos seems a bit odd as the naming suggests that it is a new OS, not a distribution, but that may be sound marketing for the French market. Still, the code is GPL, so more power to them.
LinuxGT have picked their own logo, and when it was last up the website had now infor about license or source code, but I imagine they will get round to that.
Rather than everyone creating easy-install distributions, it would be nice to see more distribution-independent tools, like linuxconf.
Is it just me, or does the "source coming soon" bit seem to be getting used more often these days?
It seems like companies could (theoretically, I'm not making accusations here) use these delays to give them a competitive edge over their competition (say, Caldera and Red Hat).
I haven't read the GPL lately, but does it allow for this kind of staggered release schedule (even if it's not by very long)? Or are these companies theoretically releasing the code under two licenses (the initial binary license, and then re-releasing it under the GPL when the source comes out)?
Delayed access for others to stuff that you've done sounds an awful lot like the protection under patent law for X years. Except the time frame is greatly reduced in this case, of course.
Stuff to think about.
I would think the most important time to do hardware detection is when you are first installing the operating system. You don't want the X Window System running for the initial install, so why isn't this using a character mode. Possibly include a pretty X11 frontend for later use, but this program begs for having a Text user interface.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I would think the most important time to do hardware detection is when you are first installing the operating system. You don't want the X Window System running for the initial install, so why isn't this using a character mode? Possibly include a pretty X11 frontend for later use, but this program begs for having a Text user interface.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
For what it's worth, Caldera's OpenLinux 2.2 installer will be released under the GPL in a month or two according to Caldera folks at thier Comdex booth. That will certainly give this (and similar) projects a good start at some code.
And to those that say a text mode one should be done first, it's easy to run just a VGA16 X server to do the installer. I'm not sure how OL2.2 does it, but they have a nice, graphical program doing all the installation. It's prettier to look at, but not critical. Either mode is fine by me. The actual function is more important than the look.
Check out http://www.cyclic.com/. Basically it's a group project management system. Everyone downloads a copy of the source via 'cvs checkout'..
People can commit new changes to the source tree via 'cvs commit'...
You can get a diff between your source tree and the one at the repository via 'cvs diff'...
You can update the current directory you are in via 'cvs update'.
Basic commands to checkout source are:
export CVSROOT=:pserver:user@host/directory
cvs login
[enter password]
cvs -z3 checkout tree-you-want-to-checkout
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Yes I know its a source code control system too!
--Surprised no one's mentioned it yet; I think it was Phil Hartman, who played "Lothar... Of the Hill People!" ==Wolfrider, happily using Mandrake (Festen) at home
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Everything good eventually needs to come from RedHat, are you?
I have nothing against RedHat, and I like the cycle you suggest, but then you aren't saying that are you?
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^~
I quote Anonymous Coward as my source.
~
\me puffs chest
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
Package format really doesn't matter. Alien can convert between debs, RPMS, even Stampede's SLP's. Your out on a limb if you trust RPMs or any packaging system to manage your linux box for you anyway.
But the DeFacto standard for Linux will always be...
make
make install
thats a fact.
^~~^~^^~~^~^~^~^^~^^~^~^~~^^^~^^~~^~~~^~~^
Checking out the URL you listed for LAETOS, it appears that they are working together with mandrake (the emails for their hardware detection section are on the mandrake site)
Life's a lot like money-- you spend it, then it's gone. Spend wisely.
This is an excellent example of how OpenSource can motivate even commercial OS vendors who release kernel source.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
PCI pnp needs absolutely no assistance from the OS . The BIOS does all the work.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The devices don't NEED detected. They just need to be recognized and have their drivers loaded.
What's not there now (and what this project seems to be) is a database of vendor/device ID's cross referenced with the appropriate kernel module with a nice GUI on top.
Once you know what module to load, the module does all the work from there. Knowing to load module foo is the biggest problem.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
hey..what window manager/theme are those screenshots runnin? /me *really* likes the looks of that. :)
-----
If Bill Gates had a nickel for every time Windows crashed...
I think it's safe to assume (like Win9x does) that you have a 16-colour VGA graphical display, or monochrome at the very least. If it just run XF86_Mono or XF86_VGA16, then there probably wouldn't be too much trouble.
But remember, this works both ways. Redhat has GPL'd all their detection code, which should give the Lothar group a jump start.
--
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Mandrake's original draw was the whole KDE+Red Hat thing, which appealed to a lot of people back when Red Hat refused to touch K. I expect that the existence of Mandrake helped push Red Hat to include KDE in RH 6.
Now that an "alternative" Red Hat that includes KDE isn't needed anymore, though, I was wondering what Mandrake would do with themselves. Well, apparently they've found a very worthy case to pursue. Even if this project doesn't suceed (and I hope that it does), it will pressure Red Hat to improve *their* hardware configuration support, just to stay up with the "competition".
I see this cycle continuing: Red Hat overlooks something that the users want, so people put together a "better" Red Hat that addresses these issues. In order not to lose users, Red Hat realizes that it must develop these features for it's release. And most will happily stay with Red Hat as a result.
This is all As It Should Be, as far as I am concerned.
--Lenny
//"You can't prove anything about a program written in C or FORTRAN.
It's really just Peek and Poke with some syntactic sugar."
This is one of those projects that should and will stand out in the community. This a required step in Linux's continued expansion. I applaud the effort of the folks over at madrake. A few suggested considerations (which have most likely alrady been considered, but would enjoy hearing thoughts on them):
LDAP?
Linuxconf tie-ins?
Great work guys!
if someone know QNX, they sell their OS on a CD and there's a standalone floppy disk that boot into Photon (their GUI) and a little program detect everything in your computer and display it as a tree, like in windows/control panel/system/peripheral (it's not their demo disk, it's the boot one for the CD, i don't know if they can make it available to everyone?), i use it sometimes in computerstore to check compatibility, i'm looking for a notebook that can run QNX and BeOS fully. also there's some dos freeware programs that identify a lot of hardware, i remember one written in TP with sources.
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
I think it does. Sure, it makes it more accessible to the win95 crowd, but at what point do we have to start worrying about "look and feel" copyrights? I think that can of worms might be a potential backdoor for Microsoft to start taking out Linux developers with legal threats, one at a time. Lothar looks like the device manager. Lyx looks like MSWord. xs looks like Excel. aXe looks like Notepad. Sure, it wouldn't stand up in court, but who among us has the raw lawyer capacity to match the MS Legal Department (tm)?
Or maybe I'm just being overly paranoid.
Another point, I saw someone else make a comment in the direction that a console-only utility would be more useful for the original install process; I think that should be more important than a user friendly GUI to play with. Personally, I already know what's inside my box, so "cd /usr/src/linux; make xconfig" works for me.
Leapfrog, the mediocre.
It's sort of ironic that you "can't remember atm" since if it were truly "Plug 'n' Play" you wouldn't have to remember.
...that just because M$oft controlls the idiotprone^H^Hoof software, people shouldn't even bother trying to write it for Linux? That's bass-ackwards thinking....
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Gee.. hardware autodetection... like BSD has had since the early 1980s?
Wow... I'm impressed...
Perry
I have been know, when it's late at night and there is a full moon, to install new hardware in my system.
Free Mac Mini. Yes, I'm
Guess it's time for me to change my nick.
Anyway, the Lothar project seems to be quite interresting and a good effort to help the new generation of linux users.
Use what you like. Enjoy life. Don't let package competition be a source of stress. Debian has reduced my stress a lot. Thanks everyone at debian. Thanks a lot. I mean it.
I've never been happier with a box. Just be happy and ignore all the hate.
This is one of the best software projects I've seen come about in a while...
Hope it fulfills my expectations...
What about USB? Just a thought...
Appears to be some Enlightenment/GNOME derivative...
Could be wrong...
...or so it seems
I have no probs with using Plug 'n' Pray ISA cards under 2.2.x .. my SBAWE64 works fine including midi .. a simple run of 'isapnpconfig' (or is it isapnptool .. can't remember atm) works wonders.
The world will be a better place anyway when ISA is dead and gone.
Delphis
I hope this will have pnp isa cards included. Not that its hard, but if Linux is gunna move to more desktops...we need this :)
Just my $.02
Natas
http://natas.kfa.cx/~civ -Civ: CTP for Linux!
Natas of
-=Pedophagia=-
http://www.mp3.com/pedophagia
Also Admin of
http://loki.linuxgames.com
It's GPL, when it gets to a good level, RedHat will simply adopt it in their distribution (or simple grab the detection code and add it to their existing detection program).
The link was down for me but, CVS is just yet another version control system which has rcs at its core.
I try getting a post for the Laetos project, and it wasn't posted. They are doing basically the same thing as mandrake in this feature. Take a look at the project, join the mailing list, join the team!
http://www.laetos.org/
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I think they are trying to make it based on linux, but try to make a bit diffrent in all aspects, so being a semi diffrent os. Once Eric start getting everything in order and taking the member fee, I will be definately helping out on this project, $25 is pocket change on fridays..
"The pen is mighter than the sword... But what if you can't write?"
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
No. M$ sees someone developing something, develops something kind of like it, but inferior, and then forces it's OEMs to bundle the software with new computers. Then it declares their product the standard, and makes sure the next release of windows makes it impossible for the original to work.
This is simply putting money in places where it will improve Linux as a whole. After all, anyone can download KDE, neh?
Cool! I'd really like to see this one work out!
The GTK Theme appears to be Marble3D. The window manager looks to be E, but I am not sure which theme.
I asked myself "what is CVS?"
v s.html
http://www.debian.org/Packages/unstable/devel/c
found this, how accurate is it?
thanks
Hmmmm.... ok, but I mean better hardware detection of such devices as well :)... Sorry for the confuzzlement.
*Flame shield on*
Why make the statement about 'contributing to world domination', when this makes you sound terribly like Microsoft? I really don't understand how one can be against a certain train of thought, yet pronounce the same desire...
No matter how much I wish to see everyone putting the right OS in the right solution, there are still comments like this. When will people realise that the world needs more than one OS?
*Flame shield off*
Besides that, I can't wait to see better PnP in Linux...especially with the amount of PCI / USB devices that are reliant on this. PnP would boost even more interest in Linux in more situations, all that's needed then is a little more help from hardware makers.
Check www.troll-tech.com
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
That's there is to it
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Check out S3 they chose to sue Nvidia for a vague patent issue instead of working on their hardware.
Who's on top now?
The ship sank. Get over it. (This sig was cut out from another's shirt and painstakingly hand-posted)
Linux isn't/shouldn't be made to be the perfect OS for servers, workstations, $1500 recipe books. Linux shouldn't be caught in the Microsoft balancing act of sometime down the road saying... Well we put the X11 library in the kernel mode because Quake users wheren't able to get the same performance that they can in Windows 2000. Making a H/W detection/PnP managment program in X11 is already going that road. UNIX doesn't have a windows mode. X11 happens to be a nifty program added onto UNIX to give it a window look and feel. Because that is true, hardware config shouldn't rely on this non-essential package being there.
Linux is just an open source Microsoft if it continues down the path of trying to be everything. State what Linux is and make it the best whatever it is.
I'd truly like to see this project done in a platform/OS independent architecture. Why not first create the software by laying out the specs and then let people implement those specs for different OSes. (Say using a unified fingerprint DB and a set of API's to speak to the configuration/detection program.) Then you could write a unix/windows/solaris/SCO/BeOS/JavaPC... Interface to this project. If all the program did was report the current configuration and allow you to change it in hardware then you could have a different program for different OSes to use this same data to modify their system configuration files.
Make it, small, clean, modular, Open (not necessarily OpenSource), make it UNIX. -Anacreo
Well, thats a pretty easy question to answer.
The project is to attract the masses to Linux.
The masses want a GUI.
Simple enough
It's a pretty decent idea, except that U tend to run into ordinary people.
They combine h/w and components to defeat most programmers. Plus, put s/w thru torture tests that cant be imagined.
Finally, what about the idiot factor? The old line about the struggle between software trying to outsmart the biggest idiot and all that...
Mmmmmmm. Floor pie!
What happend if you're running a server with vt100? you probably dont want a screen and a videocard on a server!
so i think it's a must to have a console version of this tool.
This is realy good for the Linux community...
At The moment Linux is in The Center Of Attention, I Don't Know about other countries but here in Finland Linux is in almost every computer magazine.. and seems like the magazines are getting interested in Linux too.. but almost every Magazine is saying that Linux needs a User Friendly Configuration tool.. which we have.. Linuxconf (well closest one i think). But most of the problem is in The Hardware... if This project goes on as it should.. i think it just make a BIG difference in Linux!
now We Just have to stand up to The commercial Operating Systems.. and Show What the Linux (Community) is ready for!
WAY TO GO Mandrake!!