Re: "Fastest Linux of the world", hardware detection, X11 config
On Wed, Jul 14, 2004 at 06:00:47PM +0200, Otto Wyss <otto.wyss@orpatec.ch> was heard to say:
> I just read a news about the fastest Linux of the world
> ("http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/49086"; in german). I don't want
> to discuss the "fastest" but the question remains why Debian doesn't
> have a hardware detection as good as Red Hat or an X11 configuration as
> good as Suse?
Debian has a tendency, as a project, to want to assemble a huge
collection of programs that can be shoveled onto the user's hard drive.
We don't generally do a lot of cross-package integration beyond making
sure that packages are basically functional when you install them.
So, for instance, I can count 5 tools off the top of my head in Debian
that perform some sort of hardware detection (including the kernel
itself!), and there are probably more. One of them is the hardware
detection software that Red Hat itself uses! However, the install procedure
doesn't know about them; they aren't used to configure X; KDE doesn't
seem to read the list of available CDROMs [0]; the package managers
don't know that spicctrl might be useful for my laptop; you have to jump
through (ok, simple) hoops to get a working mouse in X if you dare to use
a 2.6 kernel....and that's just what I thought of in a few seconds, I'm
sure there are more examples out there :)
Debian won't have decent support for adapting to the user's hardware
until we see a more collaborative spirit in the Project...and at present
things seem to be tending in rather the other direction, at least on
this list.
Daniel
[0] by which I mean that if you have two drives, it'll only look for
audio CDs in the first one.
--
/-------------------- Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org> -------------------\
| The only thing worse than infinite recursion |
| is infinite recursion. |
\---- Be like the kid in the movie! Play chess! -- http://www.uschess.org ---/
Reply to: