On Fri, 22 Dec 2006 02:34:54 +1100, Marek Wawrzyczny said:
>
> > And then there's stuff on this machine that are *not* options, but don't
> > matter to me.  I see an 'O2 Micro' Firewire in the 'lspci' output.  I have
> > no idea how well it works.  I don't care what it contributes to the score.
> > On the other hand, somebody who uses external Firewire disk enclosures may
> > be *very* concerned about it, but not care in the slightest about the
> > wireless card.
> 
> Perhaps we just report on the individual devices then... forget the system 
> rating.

OK, *that* I see as potentially useful - I frequently get handed older
boxen with strange gear in them, and need a way to figure out if I want to
install software, or cannibalize it for parts. Also helpful if a buddy has
a Frankintel box they build, and they want to know if they can install
something other than Windows.... 

Bonus points if it sees a card that has a known out-of-tree driver and
tells you where to find it and what its license status is (I just went
down that road with an Intel 3945)...

> > Bonus points for figuring out what to do with systems that have some chip
> > that's a supported XYZ driver, but wired up behind a squirrely bridge with
> > some totally bizarre IRQ allocation, so you end up with something that's
> > visible on lspci but not actually *usable* in any real sense of the term...
> 
> Hmmm... does this happen often? False results are definedly a show stopper.

Oh, we see reports of squirrelly or downright confused hardware all the time
on this list. :)