You should realize, that “Linux on every desktop” is _not_ the goal of all distros. In fact, the goals of most distros are far from it. The goal of GNewSense is also different. It’s just “complete freedom”.

As you well pointed out, this distro is not going to attract people who prefer usability over freedom. But this distro is _not_ meant for them. Obviously. It’s meant for those who value freedom. Yes, these might be just “zealots”, but even then - so be it.

You and anyone else can choose. Nobody makes you use GNewSense if you don’t agree with their goal. You can use different distro or not use Linux at all. Let people choose. And let some other people have that what you personaly don’t like. Live and let live.

and here is the answer I got from a Fedora kernel developer (scroll down to the discussion):
http://kernelslacker.livejournal.com/62413.html

They just don’t get it.

“However, gNewSense is also an important step toward its long-range goal of persuading manufacturers to produce computers that run completely free software, from the operating system and drivers down to the BIOS.”

And you know that this is never going to work (and if it does it will take *years*).. I just think that their talents could be much more useful in helping Linux be brought into the mainstream than creating another distribution, another completely free distribution, which will be used by a very small sector of the Linux market.

Linux is all about choice, which I believe to be one of its greatest advantages (and disadvantages), but what is this distribution going to do? Make a handful of people happy and proud of using a completely free OS? I have no problem with that… I just think that the talent is being wasted.

Eugenia: Precisely. To quote kernelslacker:

I feel it should be harder for proprietary drivers to actually exist at all.

In that case, make the FOSS drivers good enough so that I don’t HAVE to use them. For instance: I installed Ubuntu Edgy a couple of weeks ago and its GUI didn’t work. So, to fix it, I booted up a live CD, chrooted into Ubuntu’s partition, downloaded and installed the proprietary ATi driver, rebooted and took out the live CD. When I booted into Ubuntu, the GUI *worked perfectly* and it was at my screen’s native resolution.
I would much rather use a FOSS driver than a proprietary driver, but if the FOSS driver just doesn’t work am I expected not to go for the proprietary alternative?

I completely agree with your article. I also think that there should be an option to download proprietary software during the installation (with all the legal notices, etc) as well as in the way you mentioned, because I couldn’t actually install Ubuntu using the standard install CD because the GUI didn’t work. How many other Linux users, especially people trying Linux out for the first time, are going to do what I did to get their GUI working?

The fact is most distros want to give users what they want, but turning your back on the ideas of the FSF, GNU, and the GPL that got us here is a big mistake.

As soon as you have even one binary blob in the system you make the system un-auditable, and partly un-modifiable, by a third parties. Binaries can hold a multitude of sins, both deliberate and accidental. As an end user you may think that doesn’t matter much but for many people who contribute to free software it matters. A lot.

If the original creators of linux, gnu etc. had had your point of view they would’ve continued to use the closed alternatives available and not wasted time on creating something new. Thankfully for you they decided to “waste” their time.

That attitude continues to this day. I hope they will continue to push the boundaries and continue to give closed source software, whereever it affects them, a hard time. They are thinking long term here and just like when linux, gnu etc. were getting started sometimes short term pain is required for long term gain. Allowing binary blobs to become routine is a short term fix that obviates the point of having free, as in libré, software.

Anyway, I don’t know what people here are worried about. Unlike closed source desktop OS’ there’s a viable free market in open source desktop OS’ and people will make their own choices, whether closed or open, and the best will hopefully grow.

My point is that we have reached a dilemma which we have to resolve. The Open Source graphics drivers (nv and radeon) simply cannot keep up with the proprietary ones (nvidia and radeon), as articles like the Phoronix comparison show. We need to either put more pressure on the graphics card manufacturers to open source their drivers or to somehow keep up with the latest technologies in the FOSS graphics drivers (which I doubt will ever happen because I believe a certain amount of documentation trawling and reverse engineering is required). I want GNU/Linux to be a completely free OS, but it needs to be on a par with or surpass Mac OS X and Windows Vista in innovation in order to continue making progress in the enterprise arena.

Believe me - if I could help, I would.

Traveller: It’s not fair to compare the conception of an operating system at a time when there weren’t that many in the market (several, but not that many) to that of a single distribution when there are well over a hundred others out there. As you said, binary blobs are a “short term fix,” and that is all I want them to be - but we need to think of a long term solution to this problem, because I can see Linux playing catch-up for the rest of its existence if not.

If your article was instead intended to change what the gNewSense developers are doing, you would be wise to learn their motives first. Knowing nothing about them, it could be possible that they are willing to work toward the goal of a Linux-based system with the greatest functionality, regardless of whether the software is free or not. I’m doubtful of this, but it’s always possible. You could probably accomplish this best by personal, direct communication rather than public postings.

Please note that you do not need to be a programmer to help! You clearly have writing skills; documentation is always badly needed. Or get involved in answering questions on forums. Become active in a local user group (or start one!). Artwork contributions are needed as well. Don’t sell yourself short on what you can do.

Your comment totally misses the point of this article. There are no backs being turned on FSF, GNU, or GPL.

I disagree with you when you defend their “hard work”, unless you count stripping something and ‘downgrading’ it as hard work. There are already many distros out there that don’t use proprietary files, and this is yet another one…when efforts could have been combined.

That’s one of Linux’s downfalls. Have many distros is a good thing, competition and invention, but that’s between say 20 or 20. Having 400 versions that are all different by a GCC version or GIMP version is just a waste of the community. Working together needs to happen instead of forking off another distro!

That is not what I said What I said was:

We need to either put more pressure on the graphics card manufacturers to open source their drivers

I think we all need to work together to put more pressure on graphics card manufacturers - no, on ALL hardware manufacturers who release binary drivers - to release them under an Open Source licence so that Linux can move on at a faster pace. At the moment, Linux development is being hindered by proprietary drivers, but they’re all we’ve currently got… It’s either them or the open source graphics drivers written by the community, which do not perform anywhere near as well as the proprietary drivers and lack the more advanced functionality offered by their non-free alternatives.

What you said is true, but I doubt they are willing to include proprietary drivers or software if they’re developing a completely free distribution The way I see it, the onus is on nVidia and ATi.. They’re the ones who are controlling Linux’s future as a desktop OS - that’s how I see it, anyway.

And I know that I can contribute in other ways, but I do not really have the time… Over the holidays I shall try to help a project out with their documentation, and get back into posting on LQ (I have helped a good number of people on there). Anyway, if you know of any specific projects which you think I could help, please let me know

Do you think Linux should work out of the box on every type of hardware that exists?

If you want everything to work 100% of the time out of the box buy a Mac. They control the software and the hardware.

If you like diversity and the ability to build your own software stack choose Linux.

If you want nag screens, AV, software firewalls, and ridiculous licensing fees choose windows.

The fact is Linux supports out of the box more hardware than any other operating system ever.
Third party proprietary software will always have to be downloaded and installed no matter what.

Even on my mac I had to download and install the flash plug-in. On windows you have to download and install drivers, java, flash.

This is a ridiculous argument and a ridiculous article.

Nvidia makes drivers for linux, windows, and OSX.
Ati makes drivers for linux, windows, and OSX.
and every intel video card is supported in the kernel.

As far as I know, there is very little hardware in the world that Linux doesn’t support.
exceptions being:
some crappy on board wi-fi cards. ( in which case using NDIS wrapper you can use the windows driver on linux)
some crappy All-in-One Printers (these things suck no matter what OS you’re running)
and in both of these areas support is dramatically improving.

I guess my main problem with this article is,
Why are you singling out one small group of people making a project that they wanted to make? Your “problems” with Linux are just that with Linux, why single out gNewSense? There are thousands upon thousands of open-source developers and projects out there. If you think something needs to happen get involved. You don’t have to know how to program, but maybe you should learn. You can easily contribute bug reports, artwork, ideas to any number of projects. It seems to me that alot of people are turning on to linux these days and they are excited about it and that’s great, but just because it isn’t what you want it to be does not give you the right to attack someone for doing their part

nathbeadle.
I don’t think I missed the point at all. The article is calling out to distros to include closed-source proprietary software out of the box.
That flies directly in the face of the GNU philosophy.

And yes I think building an entire set of scripts that allow you to create your own distribution complete with repositories and mirrors is very tedious work. Stripping out all of the proprietary code and recompiling a kernel maybe not that hard, but useful nonetheless.

No one has done this with Ubuntu before. I like Ubuntu and their packaging systems and I have found their tree to be far more up to date and reliable than Debians over the past 2-3 years. So this project sounds great to me I may even use it myself to make some custom cd images and repos for my own use as I haven’t been all that happy lately with edgy.

The article is calling out to distros to include closed-source proprietary software out of the box.

That’s where you’re wrong. This article is calling out to distros to improve the user experience by making the OS work out of the box and NOT leave it up to the user to type in a variety of commands which they’ve had to spend an hour looking for on the internet. Remember that while you or I might be able to install the graphics drivers, configure alsa, screen resolution and the rest in a few minutes, it is going to take a *complete newbie* FAR longer, and it’s things like this that are hindering the widespread adoption of Linux.

Yes, Linux supports an incredible amount of architectures and more hardware than proprietary OSs like XP or OS X, but it doesn’t support the “latest and greatest” in many cases, whereas Windows and OS X do because the device usually brings drivers for these two OSs. When Linux becomes more popular I’m sure that a Linux driver will also be included - but Linux has to become more popular before that can happen, and its progress is being hindered.

What I want is for distros to give the user the best experience possible, as that is what is going to attract new users and make sure that most of them keep using Linux. This has nothing to do with technology - it’s a simple business principle. Keep ‘them’ (the public) happy, and they’ll keep coming back. Make them install third party graphics drivers to get X working at their native resolution and enable 3D effects and the majority of them will just shake their heads and never return. Every user counts, and we’re losing them one by one because of this.

Do you understand my point? What the hell, I’ll quote myself in case you still don’t understand my argument:

I think we all need to work together to put more pressure on graphics card manufacturers - no, on ALL hardware manufacturers who release binary drivers - to release them under an Open Source licence so that Linux can move on at a faster pace. At the moment, Linux development is being hindered by proprietary drivers, but they’re all we’ve currently got… It’s either them or the open source graphics drivers written by the community, which do not perform anywhere near as well as the proprietary drivers and lack the more advanced functionality offered by their non-free alternatives.

In other words, let’s work together to convince hardware manufacturers to release their drivers under an Open Source licence so that they can be distributed WITH the OS and make the user experience much more satisfying and much easier to obtain.

[edit] Speak of the devil: looks like I might give Linux Mint a go

I have some older laptops I just don’t want to give up. My IBM 600E works as well as the day I got it years ago. I just can’t run win2k or above on it. The performance is horrible. I guess I can run win9x but the number of crashes and driver issues simply piss me off. I can’t run many versions of Linux for that matter. I loved the performance of DSL or Puppy on this thing. DSL simply worked out of the box even for my old old, cisco 4800 wifi. Fluxbox isn’t bad but it isn’t great and it is not very aesthetically pleasing. Its a sacrifice for performance. Puppy and wifi don’t get along very well and I don’t have the patience to get it to work. Why should I with the number of distros out there that does it for me? Distros that use KDE and GNOME took too much resources. I found most slackware based distros to work the fastest. Particularly, Vector 5.8b. It worked out of the box. I get to use XFCE which has a great desktop a bit gnome-esque in my eye but with great performance. It is a nice compromise between performance, aesthetics and utility. I get to use modern software and I don’t have to use win9x. All in all, I’m glad they branched out from slackware to make a distro that does what I need as I’m sure someone is happy this distro in your article is doing what they need.

I’m not discouraging or demeaning the diversity of Linux and its countless distributions - I’m just wondering why these developers, although doing something respectable, are modifying an existing distribution to produce a less functional but more Richard Stallman-esque distro.

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