Re: How to make Debian more attractive for users

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Michael Gilbert]
> That's a great start.  However, Patrick is advocating images that
> autodetect and install drivers/packages for non-free hardware as
> well (not just firmware).  That could probably be solved
> straightforwardly if someone were to just go ahead implement it;
> perhaps by someone already expressing interest in it???

I've implemented installation of hardware specific packages in
debian-installer using discover-pkginstall, which uses the
hardware->package mapping provided in the discover-data package.
I guess it can also be used to install drivers and packages for
non-free hardware, but suspect it would need to be extended to add the
non-free section to sources.list for this to give a good user
experience.

I welcome help with this.  Please test discover-pkginstall and provide
discover-data patches to install the hardware specific packages you
know about. :)

Happy hacking,
-- 
Petter Reinholdtsen