Hardware Manager Gui

Linux is seen as a legacy hardware OS and not really one for "new" machines. When Linux is mentioned images of geeks hunkering over antiquated hardware comes to mind. Even now 90% of the problems is not user interfaces and eye candy but getting linux to run on the vast array of hardware out there. This is what puts many people off linux as they install it and say it does not work. They then google how to fix and while there are solutions out there on how to fix / replace drivers it is mainly command line driven. This automatically scares 50% of the people off. Those that persist are left to type in commands they have no clue about. Just to even see what drivers / devices are installed is command driven.

What is needed is a GUI that lists the drivers installed. That will at least give an indication of if it is the correct one or not. If the hardware seems faulty or the driver did not install properly it can flag to show a possible error. Most people that are looking to load Linux at least know what kind of hardware they have. They can then immediately see if the wrong driver was installed.

The next phase would be to make a Driver Manager that is similar to the software manager. This can be an extension of the software manager that ties into the Hardware Display GUI. So when a person wants to update / replace the driver they can just type into the driver/software manager and a list of drivers will appear.

This will easily resolve the Nvidia / RealTek issues that plague the Mint 12 releases. Realtek for the Ubuntu based ones and the Dual screen Nvidia for the LMDE.

The way forward to bigger market share is to make it easy to install on new hardware. The people looking to save older hardware and using linux to do so generally have the skills to do so. To create a shift away from the other OS's means easier hardware problem resolution.