FSF-Sponsored gNewSense 2.1 Released

An anonymous reader writes "gNewSense, the fully-free GNU/Linux distribution sponsored by the FSF, has released a 2.1 live CD (torrent). Since the last release, more non-free binary blobs have been removed, new artwork has been added and lots of other improvements have been made. It's also two years since the first edition of gNewSense, and in that time an impressive ten live CDs have been released! gNewSense 2.1 DeltaH is based on Ubuntu Hardy, and removes non-free software that other distributions don't." I wonder if gNewSense can be easily installed on an OLPC XO the way several other distros can.

Comments

questions

[bcrowell]

If this is something that some people want, then that's great, more power to them. But I'm left with a lot of misgivings:

1. If I was really serious about running a system with no binary blobs, I think I'd probably run OpenBSD. The level of hassles you encounter with an OS basically depends on how big its audience is and how many resources it has available. When it comes to something that's even more obscure than OpenBSD, I'm chicken. And I'm not clear on what advantages GNewSense would have over OpenBSD.
2. If you have hardware whose only linux support is via binary blobs, then you can't use GNewSense, because your hardware won't work. If you have hardware that has linux support via OSS drivers, then you don't need GNewSense, you can just install ubuntu and select OSS drivers rather than any binary drivers that are also available.
3. All other things being equal, I'd love to buy only hardware that's got good OSS support, and run only OSS drivers. Unfortunately, doing that is much, much harder than it should be. For example, I bought my kids $200 Linux boxes to put in their rooms, and we don't want to drill holes and run cables, so we're using wifi for those machines. The wifi cards I bought had Rt61 and Rt2500 chipsets. The FSF says that the Rt2500 has support from open-source drivers, whereas the Rt61 doesn't. But actually, the OSS drivers for the Rt2500 don't really work in my experience. That is, if you install the Linksys binary-blob drivers via ndiswrapper, and you start Gnome, you get a little logo that shows you you've automatically established an internet connection, it shows you the power level, everything works. If you install the OSS driver, then apparently none of that works. No, my kids are not going to open a terminal window every time they want internet access and type cryptic commands. If you search on ubuntuforums.org, you'll find dozens of threads about getting Rt2500 wifi to work using ndiswrapper, with lots of discussion of the various pitfalls, etc. Why would people be putting that amount of effort into installing the binary blobs if the OSS support actually worked well, as the FSF claims?
4. Their faq sort of makes it sound like other distros are toilet seats in public restrooms; they have lots of invisible germs that you'll get on you, and you won't know it. Realistically, I think Ubuntu and Debian make it reasonably clear when you're installing closed-source software. The faq mentions GLX as an example where you can inadvertently installed non-OSS software on Debian or Ubuntu. Rather than installing a very obscure distro, wouldn't it be easier just to install something like Ubuntu, do the research to find out that GLX isn't free (by someone's definition of free, which may or may not agree with yours), and then make a choice not to install it?

Re:How usable is it though?

[Zigurd]

One very serious point to being "free" is that, if you are serious about security, you want as much of your software to be available for security audit as possible.

Another serious point to being "free" is reliability. Linux is reliable because it is open. Dilute the openness, and the reliability gets watered down, too.

Re:Technological Idiology is the New Religion

[SD-Arcadia]

Your caricaturized analogies apply to all organized social movements. You may attempt to devalue any pursuit of social objective as "religious", as religions are also organized social movements in pursuit of an objective. Here: - Neoliberal capitalism is a form of church. - State protection of industries are the original sin. - Milton Friedman is the prophet who will save us from our sins. - The Bretton-Woods institutions are the equivalent of missonaries spreading the gospel of neoliberalism to "3rd world countries. - Karl Marx is the devil. And this demonstrates, what?

Re:OK, I'm assuming the play on words is intention

[ShieldW0lf]

GNU isn't a religion, it's a political-economic ideology reminiscent of anarcho-communism.

Marketing, being a politically correct word for propaganda, which is in its essence about domination of the individual through psychology, well, it's antithetical to the values of an anarcho-communist.

For these people, being able to achieve success without resorting to marketing and economic trickery is a validation of the viability of their world-view.

Do you refer to imperial-capitalist-pig-dog as a religion too?

Re:How usable is it though?

[zsau]

I call delusional bullshit, and here's why.

There's a massive difference between "bullshit" and "being wrong" that I wish Slashdotters would learn. You probably believe the the PP to be wrong, so say that instead of insulting them. Even if you think they're deliberately spreading information they don't believe to be true, the normal rules of society say you don't just insult someone simply because they're wrong.

It doesn't mean that, and it never did. (And don't even begin to pull that bullshit that there's no word in the English language that means "libre". There is. It's "liberated".)

Not remotely true. Free software is exactly the same as a "free society". In a free society, you're not free to do whatever you want: for instance, you can't take someone's freedom away from them. (You two can engage in a contract to agree to do something, but the other party is still free to terminate or breech the contract. They may have to pay some consequences, but it doesn't diminish their freedom.) Or "free time"; you aren't obliged to do something in particular doing that time, but you aren't allowed to do anything. For instance, during free time at school you aren't allowed to leave the grounds; at work you aren't allowed to spend ten minutes undoing your last week's work.

And "liberated" means something different from "libre". Something has only been liberated if it previously lacked freedom, and now has it; I am free, but I've never been liberated.

Re:Openness can be very insecure

[schon]

Communities where maintainers know each other by nothing else than email can easily be infiltrated by "hostile" talent.

What, precisely, does this have to do with the Debian OpenSSH fiasco?

The Debian fubar was caused because the person responsible for packaging OpenSSH didn't have a clue about security, not because he was "hostile".

If you want a real example of "hostile" code, one need only look at the Interbase backdoor, where a backdoor was included in every version shipped for 7 years. (Oh, whoops - that was commercial software, not open source, so it kinda defeats your argument, doens't it?)