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• Launchpad entry: increase-hwdb-participation

• Packages affected: hwdb-client, ubiquity

Summary

Increase participation in the Ubuntu Hardware Database.

Rationale

In order to collect better data about hardware support in Ubuntu, we want more users to contribute their hardware data to the Ubuntu Hardware Database.

Users should be invited to participate when they boot a pre-release live CD and when they install Ubuntu (whether the installation is successful or not).

Use cases

• The Ubuntu development team would like to have better information about hardware on which installations consistently fail, or on which certain classes of bugs are consistently reported.

Scope

Significant changes to hwdb-client are discussed in [https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/hwdb-overhaul hwdb-overhaul] rather than here.

Design

To increase the visibility of hwdb-client, we will restore its menu item (implementation of [https://features.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/hwdb-overhaul hwdb-overhaul] is recommended so that the client is more suitable for a large audience, but is not required).

We will also add a notification bubble which appears on the live session desktop and immediately after new installs prompting the user to contribute to the hardware database; this notification only ever appears once unless the hardware is changed (i.e. the potential hwdb submission changes). It is possible to disable this by means of debconf preseeding for the benefit of automatic installations (key hwdb-client/notification).

hwdb-client should be changed to store its state file in a system-wide location rather than the user's home directory, otherwise each user on a multi-user system will unnecessarily each see a notification.

Future work

If something goes wrong while dealing with removable devices, the relevant UI should ask the user to re-submit to the hardware database with that removable device plugged in as well as asking them to file a bug.

apport should offer to submit a hardware database entry if this has not already been done, and inform the user of the ID so that they can quote it in their bug report if they want to do so.

Discussion

• I think more people will participate if they see their contribution somewhere on the web, similar to http://popcon.debian.org/ . When these data are used for statistics, people tend to "vote" for their hardware by submitting their profile.

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