Introducing Driver Manager: A Simple GUI for Managing Drivers on Linux

If you're a Linux user, you know how crucial drivers are, especially for hardware like graphics cards, Wi-Fi, or sound cards. Sometimes, finding and installing the right drivers can be a challenge, particularly on Debian-based distributions that don't always include proprietary drivers by default.

This is where Driver Manager comes in!

We are excited to introduce Driver Manager, a small but powerful application designed to simplify the process of managing drivers on Debian-based operating systems like Ubuntu, Mint, or Debian itself.

What is Driver Manager?

Driver Manager is a graphical user interface (GUI) application built with Python and PySide6 (Qt). Its purpose is simple: to detect your hardware and help you install or remove necessary drivers with ease.

No more searching the internet or typing long apt commands in the terminal. With Driver Manager, everything you need is in one place.

Key Features

1. Automatic Hardware Detection: The application scans your system to identify key hardware like an NVIDIA graphics card, an Intel Wi-Fi chip, or a Realtek sound card, and recommends the appropriate drivers.
2. Clean and Organized Interface: The main view sorts drivers into clear categories (Graphics, Network, Audio, etc.), so you can quickly find what you're looking for.
3. One-Click Install and Remove: Simply select the driver you want to install, and let the application handle the process using apt-get behind the scenes.
4. Status Information: Quickly see which drivers are already installed or are recommended for your system.

How It Works

Behind the scenes, Driver Manager uses several standard Linux tools to perform its tasks:

1. lspci: To detect hardware.
2. apt: To manage the driver packages.

The application is designed to be run with sudo privileges, ensuring it has the necessary permissions to install and modify system drivers without issue.

How to Get Started

Since this is an open-source project, you can get the code directly from GitHub.

1. Install dependencies: Make sure you have Python 3, PySide6, and python-apt installed.
2. Run the application: Open a terminal and run sudo python3 main.py.

The application is still in active development, and we highly value feedback and contributions from the community. If you find any bugs or have ideas for new features, feel free to open an issue or a pull request on our GitHub repository.

With Driver Manager, managing drivers on Linux has never been easier. Give it a try today and experience the difference!