FSF-Approved gNewSense 2.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes "gNewSense DeltaH (2.0), a second major release of a GNU/Linux distribution with focus on freedom, has just been released. It is based on Ubuntu 8.04 which was released less than week ago. gNewSense is one of the few GNU/Linux distributions listed as free by the GNU Project."

Comments

And why do we need another Distro?

[Alpha232]

From http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/Features

emacs, bsdgames, nethack and build-essential part of the default install And now we know...

Re:And why do we need another Distro?

[libervisco]

It's much more than that. You'd be surprised at how careful they are not to ship with a single bit that is not Free Software.

It may seem ludicrous to some at first, but think about the benefit. Even if you wont use it as your main system you can use it to test just how much of your hardware is 100% Free Software compliant, or you can use it to see what hardware you should buy that is 100% compliant.

And Free Software compliant hardware equals best possible experience - since it will all then work out of the box, with bugs fixed and improvements steadily coming, because you don't need to depend on some third party for everything.

gNewSense plays a crucial role.

You can read a bit more about that here http://www.nuxified.org/blog/gnewsense_2_0_a_premier_freedomware_platform_based_on_ubuntu_8_04_lts_released

Cheers

Re:And why do we need another Distro?

[Blakey Rat]

And it's named "gNuisance?" Are they trying to give The GIMP a run for its 'poorly-named software product' money?

Re:And why do we need another Distro?

[MightyYar]

You are right, but there is one point that I don't think you considered: paying someone to fix a bug or add a feature.

If you have 20 PCs in your office and they all have "free" drivers for their video cards, then you can always pay someone to fix any bugs that come up - and it might even be worth the money depending on how many computers you have with the same card.

Good luck trying to pay nvidia to fix their driver.

Re:Unless you pay for the media, you're not suppor

[Timothy Brownawell]

Debian is not strictly free as in freedom, at least not to the point to be recommended by the fsf. The main reason is, it's still too easy to install non-free stuff through debian repos. Debian isn't free because it leaves you free to go non-free?

Now immortalised in song

[Lincolnshire Poacher]

RMS came onto the OpenBSD-misc mailing list in January to inform the subscribers that he had deemed OBSD to be non-free. Much wonderment ensued.

It transpired that the ports collection contained some non-free software. If one pkg_adds such software one sees a warning that the package is considered non-free, but this was not sufficient for RMS. It seems that he'd rather a user be inhibited from installing any non-free software that be allowed to express free will.

His position has now been set to music in the OpenBSD 4.3 theme song, ``Home to Hypocrisy''.

I don't personally use non-free software but neither would I consider preventing others from doing so.

Re:Now immortalised in song

[ciggieposeur]

Wow, did you read the same thread I did?

RMS popped in to say in essence that he will not recommend users use OpenBSD (based on the presence of non-free software in their ports collection). Then he got flamed by a bunch of people claiming all sorts of things he didn't say, to which he responded one by one and was quite polite during most of the 30-odd messages I saw.

He said explicitly (multiple times) that he respects the *choice* of end users to use whatever they want to on their own systems. He tried (and apparently failed based on the reaction in the thread) to outline his reasoning with a few analogies, and he politely acknowledged that the stock Linux kernel also fails to meet his definition of free software. In the end, he says his only real power is to not recommend something when people ask, but he respects the right of every project to choose their own ends and means.

How in the world can you see that as hypocritical behavior?

Re:Simple question...

[MichaelSmith]

theres actually a team? i thought it was a myth. Not a team. A hurd.

Re:Unless you pay for the media, you're not suppor

[exosyst]

It starts emacs and removes you from the admin group?

naming

[Speare]

The first thing that came to my mind, and another AC at -1 noted it, is that "gNewSense" must be pronounced "gee, nuisance" or just "nuisance." I can't decide if GIMP or Nuisance wins the prize for most useless name. I'm not saying go through a formal focus group process, but if it's a project worth spending a little time on, isn't it worth a name that doesn't have unsavory connotations? Just ask four friends (vocally) whether a name just sounds vaguely nonsensical or might be misunderstood as something else.

Re:naming

[gwniobombux]

Initially it was indeed call Gnuisance. From their faq:

4. Why the name gNewSense? The name originated as Gnusiance as a reference to RMS's GPG key, but was later changed to gNewSense by bbrazil and ompaul to also capture the New Sense of the distribution and as a pun on GNU.

Re:I guess I need to RTFA

[Hatta]

This explains it pretty well. In short, gNewSense was first, Gobuntu is official, and they haven't had the time or motivation to merge yet.

Re:!= Gobuntu?

[Keyper7]

Mark Shuttleworth recently declared that Gobuntu was not going so well as he expected because of the lack of community support and conjectured that perhaps it was better if the development team helped the gNewSense team instead. It seems they are doing exactly that now, since the 8.04 folder of the gobuntu download page it's empty.

Re:In otherwords

[just_another_sean]

Doing stupid things like renaming Firefox to IceWeezel to because of silly trademark issues, is just dumb I thought they did this because the Mozilla people said they had to if they wanted to include patches that hadn't been approved thru Mozilla? But then I didn't follow this that closely, so maybe I misunderstood something... No you followed it just fine, that's exactly why they did it Being able to patch software independent of the original developer is a core component of Free Software and Debian GNU/Linux is a great example of Free Software.

Personally I do enjoy the freedom that FSF and distros like Debian and gNewSense provide. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head and forcing them to use them though.

There will always be Ubuntu, Linspire, Mepis and other distros that provide non-free crutches to those that need them.

The GP has all the choice they need to run a free or non-free system when it comes to Linux (or any OS for that matter). I guess they just couldn't resist the chance to bash the FSF.

Me, I prefer GNU/Linux but the field is large and level and if others choose something else there are plenty of options available to everyone.

Re:In otherwords

[fsmunoz]

Do you even *know* the details on the Firefox/Iceweasel decision? What is your suggestion to the issue then?

The path of "ideology" is what allows people to have something that works and bitch about lack of "pragmatism". If not by those silly people following their "ideology" you would not be complaining about how you would "prefer" to see non-GNU vresions (apparently, just "because", no real reason).

Your comments about licencing don't make much sense either, no you cry about "choice". There is plenty of choice. gNewSense is a choice. Debian is a choice. RedHat is a choice. Running Windows Vista or OSX is a choice. I don't really understand what you're really complaining about.