Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

Forget HCL Altogether. OK, so that statement is really heavy handed and perhaps even a little extreme. Still, bear with me here. I would like for each of you to consider the advantage of other beginner friendly distributions utilizing this same type of tool to make hardware detection a simple process. Granted, many other distributions out there have their own version of this process, but none of them that I have tried even approach the utility being offered by Ubuntu.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say that I get my way on this one. Just for fun, let's say that all of the beginner targeted distributions out there decide to adopt the utility being offered by Ubuntu. Should we then dump the concept of the HCL altogether? I mean, as long as the distribution in question is offering a bootable CD to test things out with, it might then be the most logical course of action then, right? Not so fast.

Even with all of the advances being made in drivers support, the NDISWrapper offerings and other tools that make hardware configuration a lot less annoying, there is something to be said for an easy to follow HCL list. The problem is finding a way to keep it up-to-date. Xandros, Linspire and others all have lists that are awful to work with, and one of those companies above actually admitted this to me at one point - care to guess which one?

Speaking for myself, more beginner friendly distributions need to have a system in place that allows for open submission of hardware much like we see with SANE, linux-laptop.net and other related hardware websites.

Now, we are presented with yet another question - should we try to open up the submission process a little more for a single HCL categorized by distribution and release? That could potentially be very powerful. On the flip side, it could also be a dance with hardware revision numbers, firmware changes and other related headaches. What do you think?