Should the Linux Desktop Be "Pure?"

jammag writes "According to Matt Hartley, many Linux desktop users don't like to admit that there's scads of closed source code commonly used with the Linux desktop. Hartley points to examples like proprietary drivers, the popularity of Skype among Linux users (in preference to the open source Ekiga), and the use of Wine. He concludes that, hey, if the code works, use it — a stance that won't sit well with purists. But his article raises the question: is it better to embrace some closed source fixes, and so create a larger user base, or to remain pure, and keep Linux for the specialists?"

Comments

Re:Using the computer vs doing the computer

[byolinux]

To use free software is to make a political and ethical choice asserting our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

Today the number of people who are not computer users is dwindling all the time, as technology seeps around the globe. It takes knowledge to make this technology work. People who hoard this knowledge, punishing and threatening others who try to obtain and share it, are not doing so in order to preserve it, despite what they may claim.

Instead, they are preserving power for themselves at the expense of others' freedom.

We can click our freedoms away by signaling OK in the Microsoft or Macintosh window after squinting through their thirty pages of restrictions, or we can click CANCEL, and see instead if there is a piece of free software that does what we need.

We should click CANCEL when we can because that's the more ethical choice. This means we'll have to learn a new program, and sometimes the free program might not work as well.

The ethical choice is not always the easy choice.

Re:Why not both?

[Slashdot Suxxors]

Mod parent up.

Re:Why not both?

[Macthorpe]

WARNING -- byolinux is a twitter sockpuppet!

Nope.

Re:Truth in advertising

[dkf]

Skype is a problem - what's wrong with Ekiga?

There's nothing wrong with Ekiga as such, but there are many people I want to communicate with that use Skype and none that use Ekiga. It's a "network effects" thing; the greatest benefit to me comes through using closed software for VoIP. YMMV.