Seems that Ubuntu and Debian get more similar again...

Seems that Ubuntu and Debian get more similar again...

With 2.6 series kernel it seems to be standardizing... I mean in Debian I don't have to install kudzu or discover or anything like that anymore to detect hardware or load anything. I expect that it will be like that for most distros.

The 'best practices' thing is definately at work here. Knoppix benifits Ubuntu benifits Debian benifits Knoppix benifits Debian benifits Ubuntu etc etc etc. For hardware detection I think that Knoppix helped out a lot as well as stuff developed with the help of Freedesktop.org.

Now with /sysfs, udev, hotplug, hal, d-bus, and the like we are able to not only get the kernel modules loaded and /dev files configured but they allow individual programs themselves respond well to new hardware. (after adding your user to camera group) I can plug in my camera and the gnome desktop detects it and launches a nice little program for me to deal with it as a example.

Things that I see that need big improvement is getting X.org to use Linux hotplug and related stuff. X is off in it's own little land right now, practically it's own OS in the way it has it's own hardware configuration and drivers that are seperate from anything the OS itself does. Getting it to be able to respond to new hardware like mouse button configuration, wacom tablet, keyboard configuration and even monitor detection, would be very cool. I think that modular X will go a long way to making this easier.

Then the only other thing that I can think of is getting distros to automaticly setup stuff like dmix software mixer plugin and get rid of the last OSS-only audio program holdouts. Most new sound cards don't support software mixing, most people just use on-board nowadays, and it realy gives the 'hey it's 1995 again' impression when they try to start up a mp3 song player and it won't work becuase the browser took over the sound card with flash or mplayer or whatnot. Just say no to OSS! (sound, not open source software) Problems with sound cards with no hardware mixing capabilities are probably one of the most common problems that I see people asking about on forums and such. Maybe a new type of sound deamon or whatnot, but in reality dmix works if it wasn't for OSS-only programs and programs that default to OSS setup instead of Alsa... and OSS has been obsolete/depreciated for years now.

I used to say 'get a card that doesn't suck', and tell them about dmix and point them to a webpage about setting it up and that's all I could realy do for them.. but it's tough sell when only 1 out of a 100 new sound cards support the nessicary features to get Linux to work with them properly.