If firmware is missing, ask the package manager to install it

Currently, when a user connects a new device to Ubuntu and the firmware is missing, the device will not work.
In order to debug, the user needs to look into the dmesg file for something like

[ 7536.952524] dvb-usb: found a 'Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
[ 7536.957396] dvb-usb: did not find the firmware file. (dvb-usb-af9015.fw) Please see linux/Documentation/dvb/ for more details on firmware-problems. (-2)
[ 7536.957423] dvb_usb_af9015: probe of 2-3:1.0 failed with error -2

There should be a way for the kernel to notify the Linux distribution that it cannot find the required firmware,
so that the package manager (Software Centre) can prompt the user to install any missing packages.
For the kernel-userspace communication, the kernel could create a key somewhere in /sys/ that the package manager would inspect, and take action if the key has some values.
The kernel would inform the package manager that a file such as "dvb-usb-af9015.fw" is missing, and the package manager would need to know what firmware files are available in the repositories. That is, it should be able to know the list of files found in packages such as "linux-firmware-nonfree".
If the package manager does not find the require firmware, it should give a facility to report it to Launchpad.

For the example above, the user would effectively need to install the package "linux-firmware-nonfree".

Such a functionality would be similar with what we already have with gstreamer; if a codec is missing, then gstreamer notifies the package manager about it and the codecs are installed.