From: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>
Date: Wed, 25 May 2016 08:19:35 +0000 (+0200)
Subject: New post.
X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/1637de1d73ec2fbf2c33269a90aa35d0ce6cc010?ds=inline

New post.
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+Title: Isenkram with PackageKit support - new version 0.23 available in Debian unstable
+Tags: english, debian, isenkram
+Date: 2016-05-25 10:20
+
+<p><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/isenkram">The isenkram
+system</a> is a user-focused solution in Debian for handling hardware
+related packages.  The idea is to have a database of mappings between
+hardware and packages, and pop up a dialog suggesting for the user to
+install the packages to use a given hardware dongle.  Some use cases
+are when you insert a Yubikey, it proposes to install the software
+needed to control it; when you insert a braille reader list it
+proposes to install the packages needed to send text to the reader;
+and when you insert a ColorHug screen calibrator it suggests to
+install the driver for it.  The system work well, and even have a few
+command line tools to install firmware packages and packages for the
+hardware already in the machine (as opposed to hotpluggable hardware).</p>
+
+<p>The system was initially written using aptdaemon, because I found
+good documentation and example code on how to use it.  But aptdaemon
+is going away and is generally being replaced by
+<a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/PackageKit/">PackageKit</a>,
+so Isenkram needed a rewrite.  And today, thanks to the great patch
+from my college Sunil Mohan Adapa in the FreedomBox project, the
+rewrite finally took place.  I've just uploaded a new version of
+Isenkram into Debian Unstable with the patch included, and the default
+for the background daemon is now to use PackageKit.  To check it out,
+install the <tt>isenkram</tt> package and insert some hardware dongle
+and see if it is recognised.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to know what kind of packages isenkram would propose for
+the machine it is running on, you can check out the isenkram-lookup
+program.  This is what it look like on a Thinkpad X230:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+% isenkram-lookup 
+bluez
+cheese
+fprintd
+fprintd-demo
+gkrellm-thinkbat
+hdapsd
+libpam-fprintd
+pidgin-blinklight
+thinkfan
+tleds
+tp-smapi-dkms
+tp-smapi-source
+tpb
+%p
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The hardware mappings come from several places.  The preferred way
+is for packages to announce their hardware support using
+<a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
+cross distribution appstream system</a>.
+See
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">previous
+blog posts about isenkram</a> to learn how to do that.</p>