Klaus Knopper wrote:
Before I begin let me just say I have no big problem with things as they are, though I can see how it places the onus on everyone to ensure that we don't let Knoppix perform suboptimally because no-one picked up that something was fixed.I will continue to modify the pcitable in its genuine format, according to reports of users who have the hardware. Part of the seemingly successful hardware detection are lots of reports by users who contribute by reporting their hardware, and corrections to pcitable that work for that hardware.I need first-hand information. So, if YOU have a specific card that WORKS WITH YOUR MODIFIED pcitable LINE, please send me a patch. If you just SUSPECT that a different pcitable line would be better, without verificytion, please find some hardware to try first before reporting.Yes, it should be documented. I would really like to have a webform for pcitable/Cards/Monitors modifications with detailled bug reports. But so far, the changelog supplied with the hwdata package, plus the email reports that I get from owners of hardware, are my only source of information. If you would like to contribute a website and form for this, I would really appreciate it. Maybe someone else already has, but I did not find it yet.
I think the first step is to have an obvious list of the changed entries, a patch file would be fine, this would give people a list of hardware which is possibly performing sub-optimally in Knoppix. Then people who have the hardware can test if they need the change and report back. The problem really is that what if a problem is not simply over whether the pcitable line works or not, but under what combinations of hardware it works (is this the case). Knoppix should presumably use the lowest common denominator setting, whatever works for most setups. For people who know that they can use an alternative pcitable entry, perhaps adding a cheatcode based system to switch lines would work. For example "knoppix pcitable=0x1002:0x5159" would be used to switch the pcitable entries for the device from the default entry to the "alternative" entry (so the cd would need to have a table of "alternative" entries, in most cases the alternative is likely to be a more aggressive entry (e.g. ati instead of vesa) but in fringe cases perhaps it will be a conservative entry which is only required in a small fraction of cases).
As for the site, perhaps a "knoppix-report" button which gathers up system detection info, asks the user to mark what works and what doesn't (and hence what they don't have), gives the user a chance to add comments and then submits it to a central store which can build up both a picture of what individual components seem to work, but also what combinations of components work or have problems? If this was done then if someone is having trouble booting they can search for their hardware setup and see if they can't find out a solution.
Both of these are things I could look at, I'm just sure it would take a lot longer for me to get them done then many others who will be reading this, it's not particularly itching either so I don't know how soon I might get around to trying to scratch it (I think I have one of the mentioned Radeon Video cards here though to test which got me thinking ...)
Forgive me if I've missed something obvious (like the location of the above patch file).
Thanks as always to everyone, for everything :-) Niall Walsh