Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn Will Not Include Binary Drivers

February 14, 2007 on 1:22 am | In Linux, Ubuntu |

In a surprising turn of events, the Ubuntu team have decided not to distribute the proprietary ATi and nVidia binary graphics drivers with their upcoming release, Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. I quote Michael Labarel’s post:

Moments ago hitting the ubuntu-announce-list is word that the upcoming 7.04 “Feisty Fawn” release will not include the closed-source ATI and NVIDIA display drivers by default. [..] Like existing releases, the proprietary video drivers will be easily available through their repositories, but they will NOT be activated by default.

These technical board decisions were announced on the ubuntu-announce mailing list almost 7 hours ago by Matt Zimmerman.

Apparently 3D desktop support is not as important as staying on the good side of the Linux Foundation and the community by not (potentially) breaking the GPL, and I respect their decision.

6 Comments »

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  1. It’s always easy to download the driver later…

    But those without internet connections? Hmmm… surprisingly there are still off-line computers around in spite of increasing connectivity.

    Comment by hari — February 14, 2007 #
    Using Mozilla Mozilla 1.8.1.1 on Debian GNU/Linux Debian GNU/Linux

  2. Those without internet connections can use HyperGet :P

    And I completely agree with what you said - there’s no need to distribute the driver with the OS as it can be quite easily downloaded and installed after that. However, the Open Source drivers need to improve, because that caused me (and others) a lot of trouble in Ubuntu 6.10 thanks to our ATi Mobility Radeon X700 cards..

    While going back a few pages to find that link I also found this one which links to one of Jono Bacon’s posts about Freedom -v- Features (which we both read). I just thought I’d mention it :)

    Comment by J_K9 — February 14, 2007 #
    Using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Ubuntu Linux Ubuntu Linux

  3. As far as I know, it won’t be enabled by default. It’ll be there as part of Feisty and you can enable it if you want.
    btw read Mark Shuttleworth’s blog reagarding that:
    http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/95

    Comment by Arun — February 14, 2007 #
    Using Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1 on Windows Windows XP

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