The future of third-party driver installation
 

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 01:56:53AM +0200, Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote:
> If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a "Hardware
> manager". Ubuntu is currently promoting drivers as an optional extra.
> But that's not true; drivers are always necessary for all hardware. One
> problem with doing that, is that when you're missing an important driver
> and it's not available in Jockey, then you get the impression that
> Ubuntu has no drivers for your system. Reality is that Ubuntu has nearly
> all of your drivers, but missing one. Users should see that. Otherwise,
> we're always reinforcing the negative without showing anything positive.

It's a good point. And in fact you're right, updates for various
non-proprietary drivers are available to users. A good case in point
being the x-updates ppa which provides updated X video drivers. And
you're right that this is less visible than the fglrx/nvidia updates
that come through jockey. Now, drivers provided via a ppa is not the
same thing, but from a user's perspective I don't think they really draw
a distinction. Newer == better.

I kind of worry that partly because we don't have a "rolling update",
users end up seeking out updates from highly unofficial
channels... xorg-edgers, kernel mainline ppas, even installing drivers
from third party sites like amd.com and nvidia.com. Half the fglrx and
nvidia bug reports we see are a result of some sort of mix-and-match
cobbled together system that inevitably breaks in some oddball way.
Anything we can do to guide such users towards more sane update
solutions would be a positive in my book, so long as doing so doesn't
incur additional support workloads.

> If changes are to be made, I would propose that it displayed all your
> hardware, what drivers it is currently using and then make it easy to
> install other drivers. From this application, you should be able to
> export your hardware info so that you can easily provide this to
> support. (System Info > Hardware Manager > Send To: pastebin | email |
> IM | etc).

This is a very interesting idea. Already we have tools scripts and apps
scattered hither and yon that gathers this info. Would be nice to have
it in a simple, parseable form (maybe a text file somewhere in /var?)
might help in a lot of areas.

> That is to say, even if your computer doesn't require any proprietary
> drivers, the application should still be useful. It would then display
> the drivers, the developer being listed as Linux. If there are
> alternatives, or third-party drivers are required, then you should be
> able to easily install them. As a service to the user, this application
> should also provide links to the manufacturers website for further
> support. This would both be helpful to the user, and show who's
> responsible. In other words; "We have installed all your drivers for you
> automatically, except that one."

Yes, it would be important in a tool like this to make sure it guides
people *away* from unsupportable configurations, and makes it clear if
they insist on doing it anyway, that it taints their system and may
incur other bugs that we can't really fix. In fact, if this tool could
communicate the level of taintedness of the system, that might be usable
in the apport bug hooks to prevent bugs from being filed to us on such
systems.

At the same time, for users who aren't as worried about this or who have
hardware that simply wasn't properly supported at the time of the
release, it'd give them an extra avenue for testing out alternative
versions to work around problems or improve their hardware performance,
while giving them a measurable way for what'd need done to restore the
system to stock.

> Perhaps this application could also be used to try and find out which
> computer model you have, and provide some kind of forum where you can
> connect to other users with the same hardware? That way, people can
> share their experiences, and support would be able to help a large
> number of people at the same time, instead of each user having to begin
> with a Google search and go from there. That would enable automatic
> detection of some troublesome hardware as well, because it would
> automatically get many posts.

Interesting idea. This could possibly be handy as an os maintainer
too. Receive a new computer and pull up a listing of all bugs specific
to that system's particular combination of hardware and drivers.

Bryce


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The future of third-party driver installation
 

On Thu, Apr 19, 2012 at 7:56 PM, Jo-Erlend Schinstad
<joerlend.schinstad@ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Den 18. april 2012 09:14, skrev Martin Pitt:
>> Hello Desktop fans,
>>
>> We have had Jockey for quite a while now to perform the installation
>> of proprietary (e. g. NVidia), alternative (e. g. fglrx vs.
>> fglrx-updates), third-party (e. g. from openprinting.org) drivers.
>
> Hardware! Yes, that's an area where large improvements can be made.
>
> The ability to easily install third-party drivers is obviously quite
> valuable. But how do people actually look at drivers? I don't think most
> people understands the difference between open drivers and proprietary
> third-party drivers. Nor do I think they care. And why should they? What
> they want, is for their hardware to work properly.

Hmm. I think you should be careful not to jump to conclusions here.
You may run into a lot of trouble coming to consensus among the
community, or even among the Ubuntu developers, regarding this point.
Don't take it for granted that everyone will turn a blind eye to
proprietary software running on their system. A lot of people think it
is important to remind our users that the *reason* why their OS runs
so well is because the vast preponderance of its software is free and
open source software. Licensing matters -- whether or not you agree
with that point, licensing nonetheless matters to a lot of people, and
whitewashing the subject will not be an easy sell. All I'm saying is
that you're touching on a very controversial issue here, and
regardless of what I personally believe or how convinced you may be of
your own opinion, realize that you can expect resistance from various
people if you're going to say "why should users care whether their
drivers are open source or proprietary?". People will give you reasons
why -- reasons that they feel very passionately about. Just be
prepared. ;)

Instead, a good compromise would be to provide the user a summary of
the pros and cons of using proprietary drivers without making it
overly complex. You almost have to take it on a per-driver basis,
because it really does vary (aside from the fact that Ubuntu
developers can't directly support or enhance or fix bugs on
proprietary drivers; this point is going to be the same for all
proprietary drivers). But for other drivers like fglrx, there are
issues such as whether kernel mode setting is supported, the expected
2D performance, the expected 3D performance, the expected stability,
and so on.

If we could somehow capture these points in a user-accessible way and
allow the user to make an informed decision, that would be better than
trying to *over-*simplify and make a decision for them, whether that
decision is in favor of open drivers or proprietary ones. Because
remember, it's hardly a foregone conclusion that proprietary drivers
are always going to work better or be more stable. It really depends
on the use case. For instance, there was an EIGHT MONTH period where I
could get a solid 60 fps with 100% stability from the radeon open
drivers playing my favorite game (Savage 2), but it would crash on
startup with the proprietary fglrx. This continued, as I said, for
eight successive monthly releases of fglrx. But on the flip side,
there were many applications that would lock up the whole system if
started with the open drivers, but fglrx would render them decently
well. We're going to be shipping drivers with really nasty tradeoffs
like this for years and years to come, and if we don't deal with the
complexity, the users will deal with it the only way they can: they
will ignorantly claim, "Ubuntu sucks!" as soon as their system or some
program crashes for *any* reason. Complex problems require complex
reasoning, even with licensing itself completely out of the picture
(and the licensing debate will open a whole new can of worms by
itself).


>
> If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a "Hardware
> manager". Ubuntu is currently promoting drivers as an optional extra.
> But that's not true; drivers are always necessary for all hardware. One
> problem with doing that, is that when you're missing an important driver
> and it's not available in Jockey, then you get the impression that
> Ubuntu has no drivers for your system. Reality is that Ubuntu has nearly
> all of your drivers, but missing one. Users should see that. Otherwise,
> we're always reinforcing the negative without showing anything positive.
> The moon looks smaller when it's near the horizon, because you have
> something to compare it to. So let's compare the one thing that doesn't
> work with the huge number of things that does.

Are you basically suggesting a shameless clone of the Windows Device Manager?

Not a terrible idea, if it can be executed well. And I mean *well*.
Linspire had a similar thing a few years back, but it was abysmal: you
couldn't get any real information from it, and the information that
*was* there was very technical and inscrutable to end users. It also
didn't tell you whether your hardware was operating correctly, or if
alternative drivers were available. Basically it was just a GUIfied
printout of lspci. We need far, far more robust support if we are
serious about this.

I think it would be a great idea to do something like what you
suggested, but what about if the drivers that are missing are critical
to the functionality of this hardware manager application? It sounds
like this component would depend on Internet access and a working Xorg
environment at a minimum. Unfortunately, two of the biggest driver
problem areas are with network drivers (WiFi and cellular data is more
problematic than ethernet) and with graphics drivers. If the fallback
or auto-detected drivers don't work well enough, and you either can't
get a graphical interface or can't get a network connection, then
we've implemented a whole ton of work for nothing. It's kind of a
chicken and the egg problem. I suffered through this for many years
with previous hardware that required proprietary network drivers: I'd
have to download the latest drivers with another computer or another
operating system, put them on a USB hard drive and transfer them over
to Linux. And sometimes I'd be unlucky and the required compile
dependencies wouldn't be installed on the distro, and I'd have to go
out and fetch the deb packages manually from the download repositories
(including *manual* dependency tracking as packages failed to install
for missing deps) until I got enough installed. And then, half the
time, you run into compile problems. And then, the other half of the
time, you run into runtime problems, like the proprietary driver
*hardlocking your kernel* (hello, Ralink!). Do you see where I'm going
with this?

Ah, and I should mention that Ubuntu Server is a *pretty* popular
thing nowadays (I use it myself on a dedicated server), but typically
no desktop environment or Xorg is available on a headless server. So
we'd need a console version of it. I think we could even borrow some
of OpenSUSE's YaST code, because they have perfect support for both
the console and the GUI with the same functionality, due to a bunch of
useful middleware libraries.

Anyway, just my two cents: you have a great idea to make a device
manager / hardware manager, but you'd probably have to ship all the
suitable alternative drivers on the installation CD so that they can't
be missed if the problematic component is the network. And we'd have
to make sure that we have an absolutely rock-solid fallback graphics
stack so that it's never the case that you get "no X". Unfortunately,
some custom HDMI / DisplayPort drivers are sometimes needed to enter
graphics mode even using the VESA fallback interface to a graphics
card, so it's becoming increasingly difficult to ensure that the user
gets X out of the box with the new generation of hardware. The other
problem, of course, is actually fitting all this stuff on a 700 MB CD.
You really need to move to DVD format if you're starting to look at
piling proprietary drivers on the CD with all the existing stuff. It
barely fits as it is.

And I wonder if 12.04 will boot X on my HD7970... I should probably
try it... unless it installs fglrx by default, I won't get X, because
the open source RadeonSI code is currently non-functional. And since I
use HDMI, I may have a perfect example of hardware that lacks X in my
new video card. I will try it out.

>
> If changes are to be made, I would propose that it displayed all your
> hardware, what drivers it is currently using and then make it easy to
> install other drivers. From this application, you should be able to
> export your hardware info so that you can easily provide this to
> support. (System Info > Hardware Manager > Send To: pastebin | email |
> IM | etc).
>
> That is to say, even if your computer doesn't require any proprietary
> drivers, the application should still be useful. It would then display
> the drivers, the developer being listed as Linux. If there are
> alternatives, or third-party drivers are required, then you should be
> able to easily install them. As a service to the user, this application
> should also provide links to the manufacturers website for further
> support. This would both be helpful to the user, and show who's
> responsible. In other words; "We have installed all your drivers for you
> automatically, except that one."
>
> Perhaps this application could also be used to try and find out which
> computer model you have, and provide some kind of forum where you can
> connect to other users with the same hardware? That way, people can
> share their experiences, and support would be able to help a large
> number of people at the same time, instead of each user having to begin
> with a Google search and go from there. That would enable automatic
> detection of some troublesome hardware as well, because it would
> automatically get many posts.
>
> This wouldn't have to be fully automatic, but it should be possible to
> limit the number of possible models based on the hardware. Then you can
> look through a photo album to make it easier to spot your model. If you
> can't find it, then you can upload an image of your own, and then people
> could help identify that computer, enabling you to more easily get
> support – improving Ubuntus database of models at the same time.
>
> Right now, driver support seems bad in Ubuntu. It's actually awesome. We
> need to display it as such. When drivers can't be provided at all, it
> must be obvious to the user who is responsible for that and preferably
> how to contact them.
>
> Don't you think?
>
> Jo-Erlend Schinstad
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-desktop

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The future of third-party driver installation
 

Den 20. april 2012 03:05, skrev Sean McNamara:

> proprietary software running on their system. A lot of people think it
> is important to remind our users that the *reason* why their OS runs
> so well is because the vast preponderance of its software is free and
> open source software. Licensing matters -- whether or not you agree

Exactly. So why does "the driver application" currently not show any
open drivers? We should be proud of the hardware support in Ubuntu –
it's awesome! Right now, the only reason you ever have to open the
driver app is to use proprietary drivers. Most of the time, it won't
show any drivers, either because they don't exist or because they aren't
necessary. But it doesn't show it as a good thing if they aren't
necessary. It's just blank. In those cases, there should be a drumroll
and a 50px boldest header saying "100%!" and a list of all the awesome
Linux-drivers in use on this system. The good things are hidden. The bad
things are shown. Bad idea.

We should stop ignoring the Open Source drivers. We are doing that now.

> your own opinion, realize that you can expect resistance from various
> people if you're going to say "why should users care whether their
> drivers are open source or proprietary?". People will give you reasons
> why -- reasons that they feel very passionately about. Just be
> prepared. ;)

Oh, I am. And I feel that way too. But I've stopped trying to force my
own personal opinions upon others. It doesn't sell well and it forces
people of differing opinions to defend their choices, which hardens
their beliefs. It might even be unethical. I'm not at all worried about
controversy though. I'm always prepared. I was a boyscout, you know. Not
a good one, but still. :)

> Instead, a good compromise would be to provide the user a summary of
> the pros and cons of using proprietary drivers without making it

I would rather just promote the open drivers and make them equal to the
proprietary ones. If there are open drivers, then they are used. If
there are none, then there's no conflict. My point of view is that
Jockey is currently an application that creates a myth that Ubuntu has
bad hardware support. This is because it doesn't list the open drivers;
only the proprietary ones, if there are any.

The best you can hope for, is to not be disappointed. It will never
impress you. That's just wrong, in my opinion.
> complexity, the users will deal with it the only way they can: they
> will ignorantly claim, "Ubuntu sucks!" as soon as their system or some
> program crashes for *any* reason. Complex problems require complex
> reasoning, even with licensing itself completely out of the picture
> (and the licensing debate will open a whole new can of worms by
> itself).

Right. So let's steer users towards a forum with people who have the
same hardware. In this forum, competent people can explain the
difficulty and possibly how to fix them. And thank them for contributing
to Ubuntu, turning a negative experience into something positive.
Leadership is only possible within a group. Currently, if you're having
difficulties with drivers, you're on your own.

> Are you basically suggesting a shameless clone of the Windows Device Manager?

When I have things to learn, I try to learn from the masters. I feel no
shame admitting that. And yes, if success is a goal, then Microsoft is a
master. But no, I'm not talking about a clone. Different systems require
different solutions. It should be designed for Ubuntu, not for Windows.

> I think it would be a great idea to do something like what you
> suggested, but what about if the drivers that are missing are critical
> to the functionality of this hardware manager application? It sounds
> like this component would depend on Internet access and a working Xorg
> environment at a minimum.

If a critical driver is missing, then you have a problem, regardless of
what the GUI looks like. Currently, it looks like it's because Ubuntu
sucks. Instead, we should provide an easy way of getting to the
manufacturers support site. This is helpful to the user, and illustrates
who is to "blame" at the same time. That's what we call a Ubu/Ubu
situation.

As I mentioned, the application should have a Send To function. That
would enable you to transfer system information to an offline device as
well, or print it out. Similarly, we might have an Install From function
if necessary.

> Ah, and I should mention that Ubuntu Server is a *pretty* popular

Desktop and server are different things, requiring different solutions.
It's a little more complicated than walking and chewing gum at the same
time.

> Anyway, just my two cents: you have a great idea to make a device
> manager / hardware manager, but you'd probably have to ship all the
> suitable alternative drivers on the installation CD so that they can't
> be missed if the problematic component is the network.

I don't agree with that at all. Well, I do agree I have a great idea, of
course. But I don't see why drivers have to be located on the same CD as
Ubuntu itself. What about hardware created after Ubuntu was shipped, for
instance? The manufacturer should provide their own CD if it's necessary.


Jo-Erlend Schinstad



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The future of third-party driver installation
 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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Martin Pitt wrote on 18/04/12 08:14:
> ...
>
> * We install some drivers (like Broadcom wifi) straight from
> Ubiquity now, which certainly makes sense for devices where there
> is no free alternative.

"Ubuntu uses third-party software to display Flash, MP3 and other
media, and to work with some wireless hardware." I wrote that sentence
in Ubiquity, but now we need to be more specific.

A team is working right now on letting you reinstall Ubuntu with
exactly the same software you had installed before. To do that, you
will need to sign in and download the inventory of software you had
installed before.

To sign in and download anything, you will need to have an Internet
connection. Unless you have Ethernet, mobile broadband, etc, this
means you need a working wi-fi driver.

You usually won't know that you don't have a working wi-fi driver,
unless Ubiquity tells you. So it needs to tell you specifically, "You
need to install this wireless driver to complete this task".

> For the others (e. g. NVidia) we pop up a notification and offer to
> install them. I'd like to walk through the current UI and discuss
> how this could be made more steamlined and less confusing (e. g.
> for NVidia it can potentially offer 6 different drivers for you!)
>
> * We might consider merging the jockey UI functionality, which is
> mostly a shallow GUI around "install that package" now) into
> software-center, control-center, or something similar to the codec
> installer. I'd again appreciate if someone from the design team
> could participate in that (hello Matthew!).
>
> ...

Here's a design I prepared earlier: Jockey would become an "Additional
Drivers" tab in a "Software & Updates" panel of System Settings.
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareAndUpdatesSettings#drivers>

(I need to update that design to incorporate feedback from Alex
Chiang. <https://bugs.launchpad.net/jockey/+bug/660669/comments/2>)

Questions to consider when evaluating that or any other design:
<https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-art/2012-January/013472.html>

- --
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The future of third-party driver installation
 

Instead, we should provide an easy way of getting to the
manufacturers support site. This is helpful to the user, and
illustrates

who is to "blame" at the same time. That's what we call a Ubu/Ubu
situation.

As I mentioned, the application should have a Send To function. That
would enable you to transfer system information to an offline device
as
well, or print it out. Similarly, we might have an Install From
function

if necessary.


Could imagine a 'Click here to send an email to the manufacturer!'

Which then loads up gmail/thunderbird with a pre-written email asking
the manufacturer to support the hardware that is without a linux driver.


That'd get a few hits.

- David

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The future of third-party driver installation
 

Jo-Erlend Schinstad [2012-04-20 4:01 +0200]:
> Exactly. So why does "the driver application" currently not show any
> open drivers?

The only case when it does that right now is when there are open
source printer drivers available on openprinting.org for a printer you
are about to set up.

But the general answer to your question is "because there is no need
to". We already ship pretty much all free drivers that are available,
and Linux uses them automatically.

Martin

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The future of third-party driver installation
 

Jo-Erlend Schinstad [2012-04-20 1:56 +0200]:
> If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a "Hardware
> manager".

That's exactly what I want to avoid. If anything, the UI should become
easier, not more complex. Large trees with lots of technobabble and
incomprehensible hardware parts names, properties, and drivers is
just about the last thing we need to improve usability IMHO. :-)

Martin
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The future of third-party driver installation
 

Den 23. april 2012 08:55, skrev Martin Pitt:
> Jo-Erlend Schinstad [2012-04-20 1:56 +0200]:
>> If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a "Hardware
>> manager".
> That's exactly what I want to avoid. If anything, the UI should become
> easier, not more complex. Large trees with lots of technobabble and
> incomprehensible hardware parts names, properties, and drivers is
> just about the last thing we need to improve usability IMHO. :-)
>

Right. I remember back in 1998 or something. I asked about drivers, and
people told me there's no need to think about that. The drivers are
built into the kernel. And for the most part, they were. Fourteen years
later, however, drivers are still an issue. Things are improving. When
10.04 was released, I had to use proprietary drivers for my Radeon HD.
Now it's optional. I still choose to, because they're so very much
better than the built-in ones.

Perhaps when 20.04 is released, all of these problems will have been
forgotten. In the meantime, we need to provide proprietary drivers. As
long as we have to provide proprietary drivers, we should also show the
Free Software drivers. It's a little difficult for me to understand why
anyone in the Ubuntu community would disagree with this.

Sadly, reality is that people are going to have issues with their
hardware for a long time to come. All of this is currently because
"Ubuntu sucks". And, to be honest, it does. Fixing hardware issues in
Ubuntu is very complicated. Even finding out how to find out where to go
to try and get some help, is complicated.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad


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The future of third-party driver installation
 

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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I didn't see this message until after the UDS session today, but I
thought I'd explain quickly why my draft design
<https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SoftwareAndUpdatesSettings#drivers> isn't
like the Device Manager in Windows.

Jo-Erlend Schinstad wrote on 23/04/12 10:35:
>
> Den 23. april 2012 08:55, skrev Martin Pitt:
>>
>> Jo-Erlend Schinstad [2012-04-20 1:56 +0200]:
>>>
>>> If this was going to be redesigned, I would rather see it as a
>>> "Hardware manager".
>>
>> That's exactly what I want to avoid. If anything, the UI should
>> become easier, not more complex. Large trees with lots of
>> technobabble and incomprehensible hardware parts names,
>> properties, and drivers is just about the last thing we need to
>> improve usability IMHO. :-)
>
> Right. I remember back in 1998 or something. I asked about drivers,
> and people told me there's no need to think about that. The drivers
> are built into the kernel. And for the most part, they were.
> Fourteen years later, however, drivers are still an issue. Things
> are improving. When 10.04 was released, I had to use proprietary
> drivers for my Radeon HD. Now it's optional. I still choose to,
> because they're so very much better than the built-in ones.
>
> Perhaps when 20.04 is released, all of these problems will have
> been forgotten. In the meantime, we need to provide proprietary
> drivers. As long as we have to provide proprietary drivers, we
> should also show the Free Software drivers. It's a little
> difficult for me to understand why anyone in the Ubuntu community
> would disagree with this.
>
> ...

First, because "We have to provide proprietary drivers" does not
logically lead to "we should also show the Free Software drivers". And
second, because no-one has provided use cases for it.

A quick analogy. Last month on Reddit, someone suggested that Ubuntu
should show -- in the Power settings on each computer -- whether the
Hibernate function on that computer is (a) certified working, (b)
reported working, (c) unknown, or (d) known bad. The problem with that
suggestion was that any communication of states (a) or (b) would make
sense only if you had a complete mental model of the battlefield --
only if you knew that there were some computers for which Hibernate
works and some where it doesn't. Otherwise, it would look like random
boasting: "Oh, by the way, this function works on your computer, just
like thousands of other functions do".
<http://www.reddit.com/r/fossworldproblems/comments/se3u6/ubuntu_1204_infringes_on_my_right_to_achieve_data/c4diyry?context=3>

It's the same here. That there are thousands of devices that work well
on Ubuntu is great. Yay kernel developers, and yay us. But it's the
sort of victory that we celebrate amongst ourselves. We don't need to
run the GUI equivalent of a ticker-tape parade, listing all the
devices that work, to downplay the few that don't. (We do that on
Ubuntu's Web site, but only so people can check compatibility *before*
they install.)

Microsoft's Device Manager exists because some devices have drivers
that need to be downloaded from the Internet, and many devices have
drivers that aren't made by Microsoft. So if Plug and Play goes wrong
- -- whether through a failed Internet connection, or an incompetent
vendor -- it is a legitimate troubleshooting use case to find the device
and try reconfiguring it.

In Ubuntu, driver configuration is useful only when you have a choice
of drivers, and Ubuntu can't tell which will work best on your
particular machine. Usually that's when at least one of the drivers is
proprietary, but it doesn't have to be. Conceivably we could also list
devices for which there are no proprietary drivers, but multiple
maintained open-source drivers. That just doesn't often happen.

Maybe after another 14 years kernel developers will decide that the
current driver model doesn't scale, and switch to a model more like
the Windows one. Or maybe there are other use cases for a full Device
Manager. But right now, this isn't one.

- --
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