Ubuntu
gnome-device-manager package

The Hardware Device Manager is too limited

Bug #264177 reported by Shawn on 2008-09-03

This bug affects 1 person

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	gnome-device-manager (Ubuntu)	Triaged	Wishlist	Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: hal

The Hardware Device Manager or Gnome Device Manager, which ever it is does not do enough to manager of even determine what hardware is in the computer ... while i see it as a clear and direct view into the device listing, I this there should be, when available a "internet checking back end component" that can pole a site like The Linux PCI ID Repository (http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/) directly ... I'm not sure if there is any more dedicated GUI front end that does this automatically but in general I find the functionality of the Hardware Device Manager very lacking.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Sep 2 19:42:05 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
Package: hal 0.5.9.1-6ubuntu5
PackageArchitecture: i386
SourcePackage: hal
Uname: Linux xubuntu 2.6.22-15-generic #1 SMP Wed Aug 20 18:39:13 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
UnreportableReason: This is not a genuine Ubuntu package

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Revision history for this message

Shawn (ogarro) wrote on 2008-09-03:

Dependencies.txt Edit (1.5 KiB, text/plain; charset="utf-8")

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Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson) wrote on 2008-09-03:

The HAL device manager is deprecated. The actively developed replacement is gnome-device-manager, so I'm re-assigning to that.

Thanks

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Charlie Kravetz (charlie-tca) wrote on 2009-01-19:

Thank you for taking the time to make Ubuntu better. I do agree that a GUI for hardware would be very useful for many users. As a workaround, I would suggest using 'sudo lshw' or 'lspci' in a terminal window.

I am confirming this bug so that developers may begin working on it.

Changed in gnome-device-manager:
importance:	Undecided → Wishlist
status:	New → Triaged

Revision history for this message

Nick Coghlan (ncoghlan) wrote on 2010-05-11:

I just ran across a similar problem (in Kubuntu 9.10 in my case, where I can't find a graphical hardware manager *at all*) and found a handy forum post regarding the "sudo lshw -html > hwdetails.html" workaround (http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3102377.0).

However, it would be nice to have something at least comparable to the windows hardware manager here, and preferably even better as the original poster suggests - a system info GUI that provided a collapsible tree view containing all the details reported by lshw, with an optional internet lookup component that retrieves additional details.