Hey, I’m currently writing on some tool and I was wondering if Manjaro users in general find the “Hardware Configuration” dialog useful in the Manjaro Settings Manager or not.
Have you been using the dialog in the past? What have you been using it for?
My one looks like this (AMD graphics):
Extremely useful tool and just as confusing to understand.
I did. When I started Manjaro, I used it to install my Nvidia drivcrs.
I also used Manjaro Settings Manager for managing kernels.
I’ve since transitioned from both to their CLI versions, though.
I am, but i find it confusing too. What does it mean “open source” and “installed”? You either need to rename the columns or make 4 coumns (open/closed, installed/uninstalled). Or maybe change from green tick to yes/no, but right now is very confusing.
In addition to @Teo , get rid of the check marks, check marks assumes you can check and uncheck them.
For example here
It shows me that for the device video-vesa (or is it the device UHD Graphics) there is an opensource driver, but it is not installed. So, is any driver installed at all? Or do i have a closed source driver installed instead? I cannot understand.
Or maybe just do it with text “closed source installed/opensource installed/no driver installed”. Or with 3 different icons (with text on hover) .
I’ve seen it but I don’t know what it does.
Under Display controller
Unknown device name (Intel)
video-linux Open-source checked Install not checked
video-modesetting Open-source checked Install not checked
video-vesa Open-source checked Install not checked
Under every category I see “Unknown device name (Intel Corporation)”
Yet for the most part everything works fine.
Do I dare install drivers for something that is working?
So, I suppose you’re really saying that there is not enough usable information being returned, and too much information that will likely never be needed.
Perhaps another tool (if it exists) might be more appropriate.
Not sure why you’re confused, it clearly shows that for the onboard UHD graphics there are 3 open source drivers and 2 are installed.
What might be confusing is knowing which drivers you actually need.
That too.
So that are not devices, but drivers, that are available.
p.s. i know for sure i do not need vesa because my system does not boot with it installed.
Ah now I get what you mean, to me it was always obvious that the devices were the bit at the top, under which the packages/drivers were listed. However when I first saw it, I was used to installing things manually, so I knew they weren’t devices.
@romangg I never use it, just the CLI.
EDIT:
The devices shouldn’t and don’t have any checkboxes next to them, so that should be enough of a clue, but I can see how some may miss it.
Just a touch in the user interface direction, otherwise i find it extremely important tool for beginner users and part of the manjaro experience. Ubuntu has something similar so i do kind of expect every distro to have some gui driver manager.
I don’t use it at all. I have never needed to use it and it doesn’t exist on my other Arch and Arch based systems, so I am used to not needing it.
I use it to reinstall my Nvidia drivers when Transport Fever 2 says I have no 3d graphics installed, happens once or twice a year after Nvidia driver updates.
All Manjaro users, with very few exceptions, should use mhwd or the GUI manjaro-settings-manager to manager their graphics drivers.
Most users that do not make changes to their system, and especially those only ever needing the open-source drivers, may not have any need to use these utilities at all.
For my part if required I would use mhwd and dont have any need for MSM GUI.
The same could be said for pamac, though in that case I dont use the pamac-cli either.
I didn’t need to use this tool as I did no hardware changes, but always was a bit criptic for me. I have a Realtek network card and I see this:
At first glance: why is the driver not installed? My network works fine!
sudo lshw -class network says I’m using r8169 driver and it’s loaded. Instead, Manjaro Settings Manager shows 8168 with a “Installed” checkbox not checked and I can’t check it… it’s a bit confusing for me.
Thinking about improvements, might be helpful an “info” sign at the right side to show driver information when you click on it. Or a “Install” button, instead of showing it when the mouse right button is pressed over the driver.
You have not installed the network-r8168 mhwd profile.
And you dont have to.
There were/are some devices that would benefit from installing it, but you are apparently not one of them. mhwd also indicates this is an opensource driver.
Taken from a random search find posted in 2013;
FYI, the r8168 driver is no longer maintained upstream by Massimiliano Torromeo for recent kernels. We’re planning on dropping it eventually. Arch already has dropped r8168, however still includes r8168-lts for now.
EDIT: By the way, thanks to Masato Toyoshima phoepsilonix (not sure if he has a forum account), we have patches for recent kernels.
In retrospect I’ve rarely used this Dialog; in fact, so infrequently that I tend to forget it exists. I suppose anything deemed useful enough might be cherry-picked and reworked via KCM instead (in the case of KDE) though it’s not a unilateral option for all desktops.
