hardware detection (LOTHAR) and partiton editer (parted)

["Glenn McGrath" <Glenn.McGrath@jcu.edu.au>]

Mandrake linux have been devoloping a GPL'ed heardware detection suite for
around 6 months or so, its called Lothar, its at
http://www.linux-mandrake.com/lothar/  its around versio 0.9 or so now.

The main goal of this is to provide a X-windows based detection and
configuration of hardware.
but there is also a concole version that could be very handy for boot disks
i guess.

In a boot disk from a console version it should be possible to scan the
system hardware and from that detirmine what modules need to be installed to
the system.

Another thing that would be handy would be partition managment software,
like fsresize (to allow non-destructive resizeing of fat and fat32
partitions.

There is a GNU program called parted (partition editor)
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted that uses fsresize and ext2resize, its
pretty  early, it runs from console.

These would be great features for installing a new system, but neither of
these programs has a debian package as yet (anyone want to volunteer to do
it before feature freeze?)

Maybe these should be seen as long term goals rather than ruching them into
potato


Thanks

Glenn McGrath