blog/data/2016-05-25-isenkram-0.23.txt

   1 Title: Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable
   2 Tags: english, debian, isenkram
   3 Date: 2016-05-25 10:20
   4
   5 <p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
   6 system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
   7 related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
   8 hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
   9 install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
  10 are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
  11 needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
  12 proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
  13 and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
  14 install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
  15 command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
  16 hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
  17
  18 <p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
  19 good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
  20 is going away and is generally being replaced by
  21 <a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
  22 so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
  23 from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
  24 rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
  25 Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
  26 for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
  27 install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
  28 and see if it is recognised.</p>
  29
  30 <p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
  31 the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
  32 program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
  33
  34 <p><blockquote><pre>
  35 % isenkram-lookup
  36 bluez
  37 cheese
  38 fprintd
  39 fprintd-demo
  40 gkrellm-thinkbat
  41 hdapsd
  42 libpam-fprintd
  43 pidgin-blinklight
  44 thinkfan
  45 tleds
  46 tp-smapi-dkms
  47 tp-smapi-source
  48 tpb
  49 %p
  50 </pre></blockquote></p>
  51
  52 <p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
  53 is for packages to announce their hardware support using
  54 <a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
  55 cross distribution appstream system</a>.
  56 See
  57 <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
  58 blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>