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Canonical and Linspire Make a Deal
Nate writes "Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, has teamed up with Linspire to share technologies between the two distros. When Freespire 2.0 arrives in April, it will use Ubuntu as its base, moving off of the current Debian. Ubuntu users will get access to proprietary software (DVD players, media codecs) via Linspire's newly opened Click 'N Run. Check out the press release and the obligatory FAQ."
True, but Ubuntu differentiates itself from Debian in several ways. First off, Ubuntu is based on Debian unstable, and somewhat loosely based at that -- so much so that Debian's leaders have accused Ubuntu of deviating too far from the Debian release. Many Debian packages will work with Ubuntu, but not all -- many Debian packages are ported to Ubuntu by changing compilation options and, most importantly, specify dependencies differently. Ubuntu is a little more liberal when it comes to copyright and licensing -- Ubuntu distributes the proprietary NVidia and ATI drivers, for instance, and provides kernels with these modules pre-built and linked. Finally, Debian's goal is general-purpose distro that consists entirely of Free software, while Ubuntu's goal is to have desktop and server distros that are highly-polished and ready for the non-technical end user. Hence, the default menus and such differ signficantly between Ubuntu and Debian. So it's a bit disingenious to say that Linspire continue to be based on Debian.
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Yes, Ubuntu has it's roots in Debian. However, it does for Debian what Mandrake did for Red Hat when it came on the scene. Adds support for far more devices, codecs and has far more up to date releases of the applications.
Debian Stable is usually about a year or more "behind the times", though it does what it says on the tin (I use Debian for servers that really need to be stable, but I'm not too fussed about having the latest shiny release number).
Ubuntu makes for a far shiner desktop. Although some of the tech affictionados around here may drop the distro and head for pastures new (perhaps back to Debian, Gentoo or some other distro, maybe even Free BSD!), there are a lot of plain ordinary people out there who just want things to work, and be able to play DVD and have the codecs available to play the media they get sent in attachments via email, or on the web.
Ubuntu merging with Linspire, and getting access to all this could be a rather big step forward in getting the ordinary, everyday person who knows little to nothing about computers to have a closer look (especially when you can hand them a live CD, and say "Go play with it and see how it works for you").
Debian is a great base, and Ubuntu is all the easier for the hard work put in by the Debian team. It just wants to be less political and 'proper', and just get on with the job of making the framework work better for the average uninitiated person in the street.
Ubuntu isn't really proprietary. CNR isn't a bad move, honestlly (and I'm as much an OSS zealot as almost anyone). CNR itself is open source, it simply gives you access to closed source software, should you want to interoperate with someone who uses such software (Opera, Skype, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash, etc.) Many of these pieces of software many Linux users will install anyway, but now at least they are manageable via Linux's own mechanism: package management.
In the end, no closed source software has been added to the distro by default, the entire CNR add-on is optional (at least in it's use), and we may even stand to gain some ground in the OS wars. I'll count it as a win.
I think the plan is to make CNR part of many "big" distros: openSuse, Fedora, Freespire (duh), Linspire (duh), Ubuntu to name those listed at the top of CNR.com. At least when people try to switch, they will see some familiar applications available.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
I'd read a paper a while back that spoke of the need to provide legal and simple codec plugins for linux. The authors had mentioned that Linspire was in the unique position as the only linux distro with legal right to use wmf.
The paper was Here
The portion about Linspire was towards the bottom.
To the authors: Congratulations and thank you for tackling one of the large hurdles preventing mainstream adoption.
I'll believe in corporations having personhood when Texas executes one... - advocate_one
you can change the default sudo privileges if that bothers you. Compile apps from source or bring in ones from other distros (alien, etc.) if ubuntu doesn't have package. Compile custom kernels if that floats your boat. Add another runlevel to the two-step one. What exactly can't be tweaked in Ubuntu that some other Linux distro allows? I threw my SuSE in the garbage can a few months back, and Kubuntu isn't lacking anything, nor is anything not tweakable.
I think you're confused about something. At one point, Linspire was configured such that the user always ran as root. Ubuntu does not, and to my knowledge never has. Perhaps you are thinking sudo/gksudo? Ubuntu is not the only system that has this ability. Every day I run Ubuntu as a non-root user. When I need to perform administrative tasks, I am prompted for the root password, which elevates the process to run as root. I don't understand how you can think this is insecure.
http://www.mhall119.com
Yes it is. If you get a random dpkg that is not from a repository, you will also need to hunt down the dpkgs it depends on. If you install dpkg from a standard repository, the dependencies will also be there and they can be fetched. This is exactly the same situation as with RPMs (or *BSD packages). The only difference is that people have a habit of making binary RPMs available for download and just hoping that you have access to the dependencies.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
http://bugs.debian.org/release-critical/
I believe when that hits zero, Testing becomes Stable. It's currently at 105.
If you want to help debian:
http://www.debian.org/intro/help
Care about privacy? Read this!
I believe the paid-for versions of several distros include US-legal codecs, etc. Xandros and MEPIS come to mind, though I haven't tried either.