The big problem on *NIX OSes is the inexistence of a standard format for drivers. Drivers are for a newbie only installable by a complete system re-installation. Idea is to include a devices-manager that allow users to add/remove drivers by some simple clicks like windows.
Err, you haven’t got a damn clue about BeOS, do you?
BeOS already manages drivers properly. A Device Manager is unessacery, and indeed impossible with the current driver model. Installing a driver involves dropping one binary in the right place - the installer will usually do it for you.
Drivers are easy to install under BeOS. In fact most of the time you don’t even have to reboot. Media drivers -> restart Mediaservices. Network drivers -> restart Network services. Display drivers still need reboot though.
oueshcousin: BeOS is not a *NIX system. That is an assumption that many people have and from it stems many false expectations.
I think OpenBeOS anyway needs a standard-format for the driver config-files (where to move such file? , is a system reboot required? etc…), for making possible a future “driver installation wizard” that automatically seeks for the config file (e.g the *.inf).
Because I think novice desktop users should never have to handle the terminal, modify config files, launch a *.sh file, move some files or other boring and hasardous things.
There already is a driver_settings API for kernel mode drivers (Haiku makes it available to userland as well IIRC) which works well enough.
http://dev.haiku-os.org/browser/haiku/trunk/headers/os/drivers/driver_settings.h
But it’s reserved for things that can’t be determined automatically and developer options, so there is no reason to make this visible to the user. Some preferences use them though (Screen prefs sets the VESA config, the VM sets swapfile with it also).
These are good thoughts. Some of these are already working nicely, but we do still have config-files for some drivers and the biggest problem might even be where to find the drivers you need.
It’s definatly something we can work on improving, even though I think we are quite far along compared to almost all other OS’es.
(Btw nice to see my old nick decaf in the thread.)
if there is no proper Driver to support devices.system will open a Universal Driver Bus to support some unknown devices.if it don’t work system will disable it