MESSAGE
| DATE | 2005-04-09 |
| FROM | Ron Guerin
|
| SUBJECT | Re: [hangout] SuSE and Emperor Linux
|
Ruben Safir wrote:
>> You don't
>>strip Debian down to make it free, the most you can do is "taint" it
>>with non-free software outside the core/base.
>
> Not according to Richard. In fact they had a considerable dispute until
> Richard started his own Free version of Debian.
That must have been a very long time ago. As you know there's only been
3 releases in the last six years and Woody and Sarge have been
all-free. At this point, Debian is "purer" than Richard is, as they
have rejected the FDL as non-free. They're also going to rip out every
bit of binary firmware from the drivers following the release of Sarge,
which is further than anyone's ever gone in the name of Free Software
purity so far as I know. Most Debian users don't seem to be exactly
looking forward to that, but the Debian Developers took a vote, and
that's what's going to be done.
> Not with all the drivers set up for the laptop. There are no free
> drivers for the majority of the wifi cards, and the video cards.
There's no question that caveat emptor is the rule there. I regularly
run Debian's nv driver and there's nothing wrong with it and no need for
me to run anything else. If however I wanted to play games and do 3D
stuff (which is not ever going to be the case) then I'd have to go do
battle with the crappy (free as in beer) nVidia driver that everyone
seems to say is so wonderful, but personal experience with it taught me
otherwise. Similar situation with the wireless.
These days all my friends are buying ThinkPads and they're all
self-installing Free distros and seem very happy. Whether this
continues in the Lenovo era remains to be seen, but I believe IBM
maintains some veto over their design choices for the next five years,
and IBM obviously has some internal interest in having a
Linux-compatible notebook.
- Ron
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