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Debian 6.0 To Feature a Completely Free Kernel
dkd903 writes "The Debian Project has announced that the upcoming release — Debian 6.0 'Squeeze' — will have a completely free Linux kernel. This means that the Linux kernel which ships with Debian 6.0 will not have any non-free firmware. The Debian Project has been working on removing the non-free parts since the last two releases. With Squeeze, they are finally realizing that goal."
More threads on the Internet of people going, 'I can't find ucide-34235.fw' and 'why doesn't my wireless card work?!'
So they're finally catching up with gNewSense. This is very cool. It's not for everyone but it's great to have it available.
Even more people who will just download the "non-free" stuff immediately upon installing. Extra steps FTW
Whoa! I can't express how excited I am about this, it's going to change the way I "experience" my computer. It will happen on a much more intimate level from now on, knowing that there are no proprietary firmware blobs inside.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
The link to Debian's actual announcement: http://www.debian.org/News/2010/20101215
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Is this more of a "Free as in speech" rather than "Free as in beer" change?
(BitTorrent not having been invented when the lyrics were written)
they're switching to openbsd. very open, I hear.
I can think of at least two distros (gNewSense: http://www.gnewsense.org/ and Trisquel: http://trisquel.info/) that are the result of people working diligently to comb through the entire Ubuntu distro (not just the kernel) and checking modules/programs/packages for license compatibility. Binary blobs and other non-free kernel modules have always been a concern.
Bravo!
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Here's the actual article, as opposed to a link to what I presume is somebody's blog. Took me all of two seconds to find. In any case, as I expected, the "non-free" firmware will be available from the official non-free repository. The only thing we really need now is for someone to provide a minor-variant boot/install disc that includes the non-free network drivers, and everybody should be happy. (No, I'm not volunteering--my hardware works.)
Your post isn't even remotely relevant to the topic. Debian never has, and never will, ship binary nvidia drivers, these need to be installed after your base system is up and running and you've turned on the non-free repository. Basic display drivers or nouveau will work without closed source firmware.
-- Linux user #369862
No, there are principles involved. This is important, and fuck you if you don't understand that. Code doesn't operate in a vacuum absent social effects, and it's important geeks realise that, and don't fall for the lie that technical correctness or just working at all is all that matters.
Isn't this just what Fedora has been for a long time? I mean shipped completely free for closed source drivers. No?
This is indeed a wonderful accomplishment and the Debian team deserves a lot of praise for what must have been a lot of hard work, however, I wonder if they're shooting themselves in the foot and removing hardware support. One of the things that drove me to Ubuntu over Debian on my laptop has been that Ubuntu is willing to package binary blobs for drivers. Nothing is quite as frustrating as getting a system installed only to find that some piece of hardware isn't detected right and is non-functional... particularly when it's something critical like network drivers.
I am very pleased that Debian has been able to get so far while maintaining such integrity to it's mission. I really respect that. But at the end of the day, I want a system that I can use.
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
So they are switching to BSD, I take it?
No, they are shipping a Linux system that doesn't run under any recent hardware.
Not that bad, assuming someone else will write a script that configures the system and loads all proprietary firmware.
I guess we need both kinds of people, the idealists that keep the system clean and the pragmatists that make the system work. Without them we would either be at the mercy of Microsoft or struggling to boot The Hurd.
yeah, you have to run sudo NVIDIA-Linux-x86-260.19.29.run, such a boning.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Nope, there's free drivers that provide basic functionality with NVidia cards, and once you're booted and on the net, you can still go ahead and install the non-free drivers from Debian's non-free repo.
Wait! When did Debian ever provide NVidia's non-free drivers in main? This is about firmware blobs, and as far as I know, NVidia cards need drivers, not firmware. AFAIK, NVidia users are no more or less boned than they were before.
Actually, from what I've heard (yeah anecdotal, I know)
Non-free binary-blob firmware in the kernel is fast becoming a non-issue
With the success of Android and other non-x86 Linux based devices, having a closed CPU specific blob is not an option anymore if you want device makers to use your hardware
I think you'll find Debian is doing this now, because now most devices have open firmware code that can be compiled for different architectures
Just look at this
http://packages.debian.org/source/sid/firmware-nonfree
Only 14 packages are in the Debian firmware-nonfree repository
That's nothing
Frankly, I think GUIs are oppressive. I long for the freedom and ideological purity of the text-based Listro.
Unless they make it REAL easy to install non-free components this will just serve to marginalize the project and effect its future. Sure 'geeks' will get by just fine but if the 2nd tier user has to fight to get something to work, they will switch to somethign else in a heartbeat.
Which is a shame, as its the most 'UNIXy' Linux out there and one of the oldest.
Sometimes 'morals' will come back to bite you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This is comfortably a self solving issue.
You can only complain about your network problem if you can get on the network.
*grin*
liqbase
It's more of a boning when you're trying to do a netinstall and the installer disc no longer has your "non-free" NIC driver.
HURD might be finished if Linux hadn't attracted all the developer attention that wasn't going to the 386BSD derivatives.
sudo apt-get install ubuntu
should fix any problems.
It's getting harder to run Debian, which is a shame. I am slowly but steadily converting my machines to Ubuntu just because I don't have time to mess about with drivers any more. (Typically 1 machine a year; when I need an app that won't run under 'stable' without munching in a half-GB of 'testing' libraries.
"More threads on the Internet of people going, 'I can't find ucide-34235.fw' and 'why doesn't my wireless card work?!'"
New users should be discouraged from trying to use plain Debian as their introductory system. Debian should be kept pure and advanced with pure Free and Open goals in mind, but noobs don't need that in most cases.
Different tools for different jobs.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
May I suggest a roll your own distro?
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/
Momento Mori
First thing I on a fresh system (and I install a lot of fresh systems due to testing that goes horribly wrong :)
Just put this in your sources.list and your fine.
deb http://mirrors.nl.kernel.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb-src http://mirrors.nl.kernel.org/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera-beta/ squeeze non-free
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ squeeze main non-free
After that I down the catalyst drivers from ati.
And only then I start using the system. With all my closed-source goodies :D I love it!
Except one of those 14 packages is a meta-package with about 75 binary firmwares, including microcode for all Radeon cards for example.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Your Wrong. REAL LIFE Technology has a use to DO SOMETHING!. Technical correctness is a tool to save us from problems. However it is not the end all be all. In order to get things to work you may need to break the Purity rules to get it to work.
A kernel that is all Free just means there is less hardware supported. It doesn't mean things run better. It is really just a loose loose situation.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
It's more of a boning when you're trying to do a netinstall and the installer disc no longer has your "non-free" NIC driver.
My favorite was having to compile my ethernet drivers for a fairly recent version of solaris (8 or 9),
The hardware was either intel or realtek, so not exactly off the beaten path.
An entire DVD, and they couldn't figure out how to shoehorn in some binary ethernet drivers.
Work bio at MMWD
there's free drivers that provide basic functionality with NVidia cards, and once you're booted and on the net, you can still go ahead and install the non-free drivers from Debian's non-free repo.
Are we talking only about NVIDIA video or also the networking functionality in NVIDIA chipsets (nForce, ION)?
The only people who really care about this sort of thing anymore are ideologues. Otherwise, this has little to no value to end users or their computing experience.
This is the result of a few years of work by Alexandre Oliva (FSFLA), who worked on the Linux-libre project and travelled to give presentations about the amount of non-free software in the default Linux kernel.
http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/selibre/linux-libre/
(it's also generally thanks to the gNewSense guys, Paul O'Malley & Brian Brazil in Ireland, who worked on the general issue of non-free software in distros, but the specific work on the kernel was championed by Alexandre.)
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
Not really.
All of it is simply in the linux-firmware-nonfree package now.
Typing this on a Lenny Mac mini G4 with a backported kernel package and with the radeon happily loading its non-free firmware out of the similarly backported non-free firmware package. Ditto for my G4 Powerbook (TiBook), ditto for my spare laptop which is a HP NC4000 in need for a non-free wireless card driver, firmware (non-free) for the onboard radeon and so on.
The only missing bit last time I checked was however something which is quite important - the nvidia packages. By the way the NV drviver is absolutely not an answer here and not for performance reasons. NV does not have working power management. On half of the hardware currently shipping out there it is a sure way to fry your card. It may not be fried immediately. It may take months or even a year or two for it to die, but die it will and it will die prematurely. That has been actually been the case for 5+ years now.
So unless Debian wants to take the responsibility for something that can actually damage people PCs they will have to swallow the bitter pill and find a way to ship nvidia drivers (and have them properly configured powerwise which by the way no Linux distro does at present). It is not that difficult: http://foswiki.sigsegv.cx/bin/view/Net/LinuxNvidia
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Lol. Luckily I'm not drinking coffee right now.
Hurd is and has always been a lost case. No matter how many developers, if it's dead in the water, they can't breathe life in it.
RMS is great at many things, but attracting and sponsoring development on the order of scale as the Linux kernel and other high-profile projects, he's not. And that's a good thing, really. More legs to stand on and all that.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
AMD opened up the firmware for all their graphics cards more than 2 years ago
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_microcode&num=1
I'm not sure what those things are you've pointed out
Possibly old legacy firmware images that are being kept for some reason?
I think it's important to have a 100% free system that can never be litigated away or whatever (you know, sued into oblivion by a rich competitor like Microsoft or Apple). You're still free to add whatever non-free stuff you want while being confident in the knowledge that your distro will never go away.
Only this sort of insistence on purity is what gives us any FREE drivers at all. You might as well go use a closed OS.
Sure not everyone needs to go this way, but if none do no progress will ever be made.
How do I know that website is freeware? I'm not clicking on that.
I always use testing (stable's too dull and experimental too exciting), so I'm currently on squeeze.
Just bought a new Core i3 server system, Asus Mini-ATX mobo, built in video, built in gigE for house side, added an old PCI 10/100 Eth card for cable modem side, Intel SSD for /, 1TB SATA for /data, 4 GB RAM. Cheap as hell, like $250 for the whole thing.
No hardware issues at all so far, everything just seems to work. It's firewalling, media serving, web serving, and all the other bits you'd expect it to do. But it's running headless now so not exercising video or audio.
It reminds me of what Eric Redmond said in one of his books on Linux. He wrote a fairly insightful book called the Cathedral and the Bizzare that examined the differences between the open source community and proprietary closed systems. He had a lot of pros for the open source side, but his one major con, in his words was:
Linux is only free if your time has no value
This Debian solution will waste more of people's precious time. What is the value added from that???
OpenBSD has been blob free for a long time. actually, it was probably always blob free.
the increased pressure by major Linux distros that will force vendor to release all details of their firmware and allow completely free reimplementation will make it better for everyone.
but yeah, it's going to hurt in the short term, and a lot of people will use workarounds to install blobs to make sure they can actually use their computers/print/use their wireless card....
Good luck!
No way. GNU projects do not allow the chaotic early linux kernel development attitude.
Think Win modems. Remember those? They didn't have their firmware permanently stored on the device. Rather, it was loaded onto the device from windows. It made them cheaper to produce.
Well, Linus allowed some similar binary firmware blobs into the kernel just for that purpose. They aren't drivers ( communication between hardware and the kernel), they're firmware ( software for the hardware to run itself).
So they are switching to BSD, I take it?
No, they are shipping a Linux system that doesn't run under any recent hardware.
Not that bad, assuming someone else will write a script that configures the system and loads all proprietary firmware.
I'm guessing that script will be called "Ubuntu".
Yep it's totally dead. It can't boot, and no one wants to waste time on it.
http://www.archhurd.org/
Oh wait... Nevermind...
All you have to do is enable the non-free repositories. They've removed it from the standard install.
It will essentially cause this though:
Me to be able to run a system free of binary blobs and sourceless turds in my kernel.
More ease of troubleshooting problems with system devices.
A kernel with less licensing and freedom issues.
Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
I feel sorry for you if your NIC requires firmware of any kind.
Fucking cheapass manufacturers. Put a fucking ROM on it!
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
HURD might be finished if Linux hadn't attracted all the developer attention that wasn't going to the 386BSD derivatives.
HURD didn't go anywhere before Linux and the other free Unix derivites came on the scene, and even with all that code now available to steal from, it still hasn't gone anywhere. First time I heard about it, many years ago, they were arguing about which kernel to base it on. Last time I heard about it, they had gotten to the point that they were trying to decide which kernel to base it on. Guess where they will be 10 years from now.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
...cheaper than the pills for your OCD.
> I guess we need both kinds of people, the idealists that keep the system clean and the pragmatists that make the system work. Without them we would either be at the mercy of Microsoft or struggling to boot The Hurd.
WOW. One of the best commentaries I've read in a long time in /. about ideology.
Very nice.
Hurd used to be the proposed kernel for a fully free OS. Now, it's a research project in OS design.
Since Linux exists, there's no need for Hurd as anything more than a research project. No one outside of the OS research community cares about it anymore, not even RMS himself.
RMS attracted and sponsored development on the scale of the GNU project. GCC, which he initially wrote, is used everywhere. BASH is the standard UNIX shell.
No it wouldn't. The Hurd is the Duke Nukem Forever of kernels because the developers suffer the same issues with delivering as George Broussard did.
GCC, which he initially wrote, is used everywhere.
Wrong. GCC was a modification of a previous compiler, Pastel, to compile C code. And when it was rewritten Len Tower did most of the work.
"doesn't run under any recent hardware"
What planet are you on? Apart from the wireless chip on one of my laptops, none of my three systems (all fairly vanilla) require any proprietary firmware.
I get your point, but you are exaggerating greatly.
Non-free, closed-source binary blobs running on the CPU in the kernel are bad, I fully agree. They can corrupt system memory in terrible, subtle ways, and without the source code it's nearly impossible to diagnose problems. Non-free, closed-source binary blobs running on an external device with completely separate microcontroller, RAM, etc? What's wrong with that?
The whole point of having firmware in an external device is to separate/wall-off the functionality of that device from the general-purpose CPU and memory. In fact I can't think of a single device in a modern computer system that doesn't have some sort of firmware. Not all devices have loadable firmware like the ones Debian is targeting, but who gives a crap if it's loadable or not? In fact I would rather that every device have loadable (or at least flashable) firmware so that I can upgrade it or get bugfixes from the vendor.
The usual argument against these firmwares goes something like, "IO devices have access to full system memory, and are thus unsafe unless we see their firmware." Well, any IO device has access to system memory whether or not it has firmware. A buggy piece of firmware-free hardware can just as easily scribble on anything in memory or generate a flood of interrupts or whatever as something with firmware. This requirement is tantamount to requiring all the RTL for every device attached to the computer, which is certainly not going to happen.
HURD might be finished if Linux hadn't attracted all the developer attention that wasn't going to the 386BSD derivatives.
Didn't HURD have about 10 years of development before Linus wrote Linux?
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
No way. GNU projects do not allow the chaotic early linux kernel development attitude.
Better chaotic development than no development.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
That's not necessarily true. A lot of very common modern hardware runs on open drivers. The only places where there's any real trouble is graphics and wifi. As graphics go, Intel is fully open (aside from the GMA 500) and you'd be surprised how good their recent chips have gotten. The GMA 945 stuff, frankly, gave them a bad rep they don't really deserve anymore. But still, if you want top of the line, you'll probably want to go with an AMD or nVidia card, and a closed driver.
As wifi goes, there are plenty of choics out there you can get that are supported by a fully open driver. I have a DLink wireless-n card in my desktop that's supported wonderfully by the fully open ath9k driver. You don't need a firmware blob or anything.
So, the situation is wrt hardware is much better than it has been, and if you're the sort of person who cares about purity you can achieve it with a small amount of effort.
Stallman has heard the news, and had an orgasm.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
If you even remotely knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't have said that.
If you don't need to play games or use flashy BS desktops, then all you need is the built in nv drivers.
If you really, truly, needed the graphics acceleration from an nvidia card, you would know you install the farking nvidia driver from nvidia's website!!! OMG NO WAIS!
It's fast, easy, and works.
For most end users it might not be a big concern to use the nonfree rep, but for a company that build a product around linux-say a broadband router, it might be nice to know that the distro is "clean".
Firmware is the software that runs on the device (PCI card, USB device etc), not on the CPU. This is unrelated to binary blobs like the NVIDIA driver, which do run on the CPU.
It doesn't matter how many developers HURD had in the 90s, it still wouldn't be able to join a wi-fi network without loading the card's non-free firmware.
0 1 - just my two bits
Why should I care if the Linux kernel is free of non-free firmware? Does that have the added benefit of rending the hardware devices I use unusable? If so, well done Debian: you've successfully maintained the honourable badge of forcing your users to work as if it was 2000.
All the work for this release is f'n up everyone else's SID Branch--you know the one where most users with half a brain use and stable they never touch because that code is targeted for businesses and other low risk drones who don't have half a brain if something gets hosed.
Only on effing /. could someone exhibiting actual social awareness be accused of autism. You moron.
So they are switching to BSD, I take it?
No, they are shipping a Linux system that doesn't run under any recent hardware.
Your assessment is spot on.
This makes it easier for them, but harder for the end user. Not a show stopper, but something of a wicked speed bump.
OpenSuse has been doing this for a while (perhaps to a lesser degree than is planned by Debian) but it has always been something of an issue getting the thing to work for new users until someone clues them that they have to go enable another repository, even several, usually not hosted by opensuse, in order to achieve a fully functional machine. Video drivers were bad enough, but sort of expected. Finding a semi functional sound system until you added off site repositories was always an irritant.
Much of the third party or non-free driver issues were blended by Ubuntu to the degree that the new user (or even seasoned ones) were not aware how much non-free stuff Ubuntu would seamlessly integrate.
Lots of new linux users would be in for a rude awakening if they tried to use their new high end hardware with a distro that does not handle this integration for them.
Playing with Arch Linux is like stepping back in time 10 years, not in terms of functionality, but in terms of chasing drivers.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
They gave us the microcode, but not the source used to compile the microcode. It's basically a blob that runs on the GPU parsing command packets and executing them. So while they've documented the command packets, there's another level of code between it and the hardware. Exactly like how CPUs have microcode to execute x86/x86_64 commands, the only difference is that on GPUs they're loaded after the system is booted by the driver. It doesn't really make the GPU closed source any more than Intel or AMD are closed source CPUs, but if you want to get really formal about it you are distributing a non-free piece of software.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Its not limited to proprietary firmware. (Although that may be the only bit that affects the kernel directly).
There are a lot of non-free portions in the sound system, video chipsets, and a few other interfaces that may work to some degree using open source drivers, but usually not well, and not right away.
You have to run vendor supplied drivers for ATI/Nvidia/Intel video, or suffer long waits for the open source versions to catch up.
Similar situations exist for audio chipsets, as well as mp3 support in some distros. Wanna play that DVD video? Not going to happen with ONLY free opensource software distributed by many Distros. Admittedly not all of this stuff is kernel country. But the point remains that a totally FOSS machine has some fairly large challenges.
Just don't buy anything really new and you may not notice the difference.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Sure not everyone needs to go this way, but if none do no progress will ever be made.
Except by the proprietary folk, who make most of the progress the free stuff steals anyway.
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
There's NV and there is Nouveau, which is the community driver and from what I can tell, it's already much more advanced.
Power management has been lacking, but it's coming and they are already testing it: http://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/PowerManagement
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And what model would that be? Free drivers have worked with any NIC I've thrown at them.
Dilbert RSS feed
"You have to run vendor supplied drivers for ATI/Nvidia/Intel video"
No, they work without, so you don't "have to." You only need vendor drivers if you want to take advantage of enhanced capabilities, such as GPU acceleration. It's a choice.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Nope. Those people already jumped ship to *buntu. And rightly so, since this distro better fits their specific needs. Debian being completely free is A Good Thing for those who care what is running on their machines.
Rudolf Hess edited Mein Kampf. He was the very first grammar nazi.
Not just Linux, they yanked it out of the kfreebsd kernel too, which is causing problems because you can't just install a firmware-kfreebsd package - yet. I think they were a bit premature pulling the trigger on the kfreebsd kernel. Check out: http://lists.debian.org/debian-bsd/2010/12/msg00046.html and http://bugs.debian.org//cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=594940
I think most companies cares more about a kernel that works than a kernel that is "clean". Fact is, I have debian running on ARM-based linux products and ot frequently involves non-free drivers or microcode because there are no FREE drivers available.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Depends on what you need to do. Some people actually need to do jobs which require they use modern graphics cards' capabilities. It's quite a stretch to argue those people don't need vendor supplied drivers. Sure, an individual (who is fanatically purist) could pick a different line of work, but SOMEONE is going to be doing that work (because society wants the work done), and that SOMEONE needs those drivers (because there simply isn't an alternative).
http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/History
"At this point, I concluded I would have to write a new
compiler from scratch. That new compiler is now known as GCC; none of the
Pastel compiler is used in it, but I managed to adapt and use the C front
end that I had written."
Exactry :)
At a certain point, people are willing to accept that it's a soft vga BIOS. It's not like you have a compiler or the source code for your motherboard's BIOS either.
You're new here aren't you?
I guess we need both kinds of people, the idealists that keep the system clean and the pragmatists that make the system work. Without them we would either be at the mercy of Microsoft or struggling to boot The Hurd.
Sounds a lot like Haskell mentality: write as much "pure" code as you can and then do what little you must inside the IO Monad.
It's been awhile since I had that problem (maybe 4 months?), but I think it was some old 10/100 3com or Intel NIC pulled from some old Compaq machine aimed at the medium business market. I didn't bother with hunting down the driver. I just dug out another NIC from the closet.
... where all the computers are free and none of them work quite right.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
Im sure the problem is RMS wants to get the Hurd right from the beginning. But you never really can plan for everithing on a nontrivial case. Gotta have your child grow by herself or she will go fubar on you.
FCKGW 09F9 42
You realize the host CPU (x86, ARM, POWER, etc - the one that gets all the press) isn't the only microprocessor in the system - many of these binary blobs run on other microprocessors and don't need to be recompiled for different host architectures. In a given system, there are usually several other processors that handle various, often real-time, functions. It is common for these devices to lack non-volatile storage and must boot from their host (the CPU) which is why these blobs are needed.
For example, your wireless adapter probably contains its own microprocessor whose firmware must be loaded by the host CPU during system initialization.
That isn't to say vendors aren't releasing the source for their kernel drivers that interfaces with these devices - they are, and generally have been for sometime. I think this has more to do with the magic doesn't usually happen in these drivers anyway as they only provide an interface to an external device. At the same time, releasing the kernel driver source code and providing free examples of using their devices is a good marketing tool - I'm more likely to go with a vendor who makes my life easy and lets me see how to implement their devices without getting the lawyers involved. Now, the firmware that runs on these devices is what is worth protecting, and, from my experience, is still largely closed and protected by NDAs.
I should also point out that many such devices are really just consumer friendly implementations produced by Company X of a product developed by Company Y. Company Y usually makes the firmware, and may or may not make the drivers, but it is up to Company X to package it all together and sell it to you, the consumer. Company X may want to GPL the drivers, but it is up to Company Y to GPL the firmware.
I guess we need both kinds of people, the idealists that keep the system clean and the pragmatists that make the system work.
Yup, that's why the likes of Linux Mint are still forever relevant. we need pragmatists to temper the idealists at times.
of course i might just burn the iso for a joke and watch it utterly fail to work,
What about "your" instead of "you're". He should be driving the grammar nazis absolutely bananas.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
hand in your geek card, sir.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Small correction: His name is Eric Raymond, and he usually goes by Eric S. Raymond professionally.
The book can be found at isbn.nu or elsewhere, including from O'Reilly in case you're partial to them (since they don't show up in isbn.nu's list).
ESR's home page is a great resource unto itself.
I never understood why people care about loading magic bytes needed by an arbitrary hardware device to do what its suppsed to. I can almost understand open drivers..but firmware? really? Whats next expecting vendors to furnish you with schematics for their asics too?
What is the big deal? Who does it hurt? What freedoms are abridged?
Will Debian be providing open Intel and AMD microcode as well or will they just forget about it in persuit of an ideal that ends up causing real harm to the end user.
Honestly look around you...look at the dynamics playing out on the Internet and mobile devices between governments, media companies, apple, google and facebook... If you really want "free"dom go pick a battle that actually stands a chance at making a real difference.
A kernel with less licensing and freedom issues.
Stop anthropomorphizing the kernel or any software for that matter. They hate that.
Software is a thing. It has no rights or freedoms.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Those "cheap ass manufacturers" are only serving their customer base which would be "cheap ass" consumers. Stop being so damn cheap and you will eliminate the market for "cheap ass" solutions.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Try doing a netinstall on any G5 or G6 series servers from HP. Whoops, no Broadcom Netextreme 2 firmware.
Hey man, you are already posting on Slashdot. How much more non-free can you get?[1] ;)
[1] Admittedly the slashcode project does exist, but Slashdot proper is indisputably not DFSG free.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Just add non-free to your sources.list & download it.
Might be.
Or free OSes may have stayed an academics dream...
We will never know...
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Broadcom NetExtreme 2 (bnx2) and the Broadcom NetExtreme 2 10Gb (bnx2x), NetXen/QLogic ethernet and 10Gb ethernet (netxen). That's just the ones I've personally dealt with in combination with Debian Lenny. All found in high end (I.e. very expensive) servers. Doing a netinstall on an HP server is fun. Oh and throw in some common Fibre Channel HBA's while you're at it.
nothing is stolen.. free ensures purchases come with no strings still attached.
..and the flipside is true too.. in any context, people like yourself help ensure the next tyrant's regime. while he rules, only the progress which benefits him is permitted, causing him to become an obstructionist troll to those on the outside. when this (inevitably) happens, he enlists the help of established authority to prop up his business..
so, yes, while life is made up of compromise, it is not an excuse to roll over and simply take what is given to you, because, inevitably, it was not made to serve you, it was made to serve the one who made it.
Sure, it's a noble goal, but how does a completely free kernel benefit users if at all? (or even worse).
That "freedom" is only noticeable in licensing and stuff, and unless the user is extremely self-conscious about copyright laws, it'll offer a diluted, incomplete experience. What means that user will bounce back to Win/Mac after trying linux and seeing how many devices don't work without binary drivers.
Seriously, they want to become more niche or satisfy users? I really can't tell.
Linux Mint Debian Edition
There are plenty of other distros out there that don't aim for an all-free kernel.
Although, to be fair, debian does run on more hardware than pretty much any other OS, so if 'supporting lots of things' is important to you, Debian is still going to be at the forefront
Everybody Loves Eric Raymond.
First of all, Operating Systems don't run "under" hardware. Second, there are non-proprietary drivers available for the vast majority of recent hardware.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Exactly. It's still the most user-friendly solution. The generic drivers allow you to get the basics done until you can choose for yourself which drivers you want to install.
It's been a while since I last used a workstation with Debian instead of Ubuntu, but isn't there even a dialog which asks you whether you want to enable the non-free repository?
Different tools for different jobs.
So what job then requires an OS that is "pure and advanced with pure Free and Open goals in mind" ?
Most jobs that I'm aware of require an OS that works; and the "works" part is not negotiable.
is to be free of users! Release 6.0 goes greatly toward that direction. ;)
Stallman would say that we still need the code to have the freedom to customise it and redistribute our changes.
Yes, RMS is a zealot, and no, I don't agree with all of his politics, but he makes some good points. This is one of them.
I'm willing to compromise for a working system, but if I don't have to (by buying hardware that uses completely open firmware) then that's even better.
are you intentionally cribbing from http://xkcd.com/743/ ??
Browsing with classic discussion, noscript, at -1 and nested
no hidden comments and I only mod UP
if new users use debian, they stand a better chance of actually learning something about operating systems and computers.
we *all* need open-source, what you call free and open
Browsing with classic discussion, noscript, at -1 and nested
no hidden comments and I only mod UP
1. Eric Raymond
2. The Cathedral and the Bazaar
3. I don't believe he said that.
4. It was never true. Linux is now as easy as windows to get things done with, easier for a lot of people. Not to mention that back in the days when it was damned hard work to get it working properly you were still learning about system internals and increasing your knowledge, therefore your skill set and marketability. Not to mention that my (huge, multinational) employer seems to think linux is fine for the desktop and the server room. And they have to pay for their employees' time.
The value added is that people will buy more FOSS friendly hardware if they wish to use debian, and that developers will turn their attention to any major gaps in support.
I've been running squeeze on multiple different architectures for months and haven't found anything it doesn't support yet.
In conclusion, you're a troll.
Or "different tools for different tools", as it were
> In conclusion, you're a troll.
Whom you nonetheless proceeded to feed, with four numbered points and an epilogue. Congratulations sir.
And some people need to do jobs which require Windows software that doesn't run under Wine.
So? That doesn't mean that a totally free OS is impossible. It just means that some people will still need proprietary OS's.
Let the rest of us have our fun, hmm?
So what job then requires an OS that is "pure and advanced with pure Free and Open goals in mind" ?
'Making a derived OS' springs to mind. It'd be nice to be clear on licensing, redistribution rights etc.
I'm not sure if the binary firmware blobs in the kernel have any different redistribution restrictions, though...
Using the nv drivers on a laptop can permanently destroy it. Power management isn't just about saving energy.
It runs just fine on all of the hardware that I have. It's not like you can't add non-free to your sources.list and install the non-free firmware.
It already exists. The whole reason that it took us so long to remove the non-free firmware is because we had to have a mechanism to allow for users who wanted to run on systems which required it to load the firmware. Of course, if the article actually bothered to link to the original blog posting or the announcement e-mail, it would have been obvious to you.
http://www.donarmstrong.com
Using pure Debian means you know how to make it work. The fact that the images are going to be configured one way shouldn't mean anything to a Debian admin.
This is the reason there are so many downstream projects; that there is the joke: "Ubuntu is short for 'can't install Debian.'" This isn't supposed to be mean, just an observation about the differences between the goals of each community. That being said, I bet most people could run a deb box with very little actual effort.
I'm typing this from a 10.04 desktop and doing a lazy Squeeze setup via Webmin (cheating) on an old P4 and grooving on some Pink Floyd. You can pretty much use Webmin (BSD style license) as a tutorial GUI to learn a new system or just when messing around with a beta like squeeze.
Remember, this is supposed to be fun:
System hostname debSQZ32Proto.xx.xxx.xxx
Operating system Debian Linux 6.0
Webmin version 1.530
Time on system Thu Dec 16 18:43:52 2010
Kernel and CPU Linux 2.6.32-5-686 on i686
Processor information Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz, 1 cores
System uptime 0 hours, 47 minutes
Running processes 88
CPU load averages 0.00 (1 min) 0.01 (5 mins) 0.00 (15 mins)
CPU usage 0% user, 0% kernel, 0% IO, 100% idle
Real memory 493.11 MB total, 68.45 MB used
Virtual memory 1.86 GB total, 0 bytes used
Local disk space 71.50 GB total, 4.85 GB used
Package updates All installed packages are up to date
This thing barely breaks a sweat as a multi-purpose LAN services platform/filter on a 7 user network - and was running for something like four years with only incidental reboots before I swapped it into the prototype queue for an update to Squeeze. Debian rocks like that.
Just remember to remove the tools you use for setup before putting the box out in the wild (and lock the Webmin process to local access/set root directory explicitly whenever it is installed on your boxes). Once you get standardized and oriented you can create much more efficient installation procedures using automated tools...
Anyhow, Canonical is doing a good job on the 'casual workstation' part of things - their effort might be seen as allowing Debian to continue refining the foundational mission.
lmao. this ain't your father's slashdot. now-a-days the average slashdotter has a stick up their ass, about who knows what.
go out and live a little.
On half of the hardware currently shipping out there it is a sure way to fry your card. It may not be fried immediately. It may take months or even a year or two for it to die, but die it will and it will die prematurely. That has been actually been the case for 5+ years now.
I didn't think NVidia needed Debian's help with that... ;)
Meh, I was bored and it was more fun writing that than doing any work.
There's an interesting article over at Distrowatch about the binary blob issue. The author poses, like you have suggested, the rhetorical question of whether it's better to have the kernel load non-free firmware (e.g. from hard disk) or have the chip load the same from its internal memory. So is it better (1) to have binary-only firmware that you might hack even if with difficulty by using, say, a hex editor, or (2) to have burnt-in firmware that nobody but a hardcore hardware hacker can modify?
Sigh. This is dumb. I can't use my broadcom 1GBASE-T chips, my FC cards or many SCSI cards. How exactly are people expected to install Debian on servers and workstations that have these things? Can't do it if the drivers don't work because the firmware was removed. Without ethernet I can't even download the missing firmware.. Which means the mainstay install media for Debian won't come from Debian. Crappy.
I think the parent's point only applies to products they intend to re-distribute, altho I don't see why. If it's in the kernel it must be GPL compliant and can be re-distributed.
No sig
Perhaps not, but at least the motherboard manufacturer sprung for the 50 cent eeprom so I don't have to load the firmware into the motherboard every time I want to boot.
If someone really cared through, there are open source BIOS implementations out there.
and what's your point exactly regarding this news about Debian; an organisation whose goal is to provide a completely free software operating system..?
It'd be nice to be clear on licensing, redistribution rights etc.
Proprietary blobs are always very clear on licensing and redistribution rights :-) That's probably the first thing they tell you when you install them.
I'm not sure if the binary firmware blobs in the kernel have any different redistribution restrictions, though
I very much doubt that any such blobs are explicitly licensed for use under Linux and not, say, NetBSD. Your incarnation of the free OS would use the same blob in basically the same way. Of course if your OS can't talk to this or that binary driver, it's just too bad - but it's not the license that forbids you something, it's your new and improved driver API that does you in.
With regard to the freedom to understand (as another poster mentions) there is very little to understand in that code unless you also have the schematic of the hardware, *and* the HDL code for all the ASICs that are involved. For example, the super-duper-secret piece of NVidia code can say this:
uint32_t *p = (uint32_t *) REG_ARRAY_A_AUX_CTRL_REG3;
*p = REG_ARRAY_A_AUX_CTRL_REG3_SETUP1_MASK;
What does that tell you? Nothing, unless you - like the NVidia firmware guy - have access to *all* the relevant documentation and on top of that have the phone number of the ASIC developer on a speed dial. Without such information you know just enough to be dangerous :-) You can change one bit and burn the hardware. A lot of the code is also written in a certain way, and it may be not obvious why. For example, you may "optimize" a piece of code and break everything because the original code was crafted to execute in so many clock cycles or to leave certain registers untouched. We may debate whether this is a good way of writing code or not, but that's how some firmware is written, especially if you can't afford timer interrupts (like when you generate a serial bitstream for a chip that is much faster than your CPU.) In those cases you need to have very good understanding of the hardware that you are driving, and have a datasheet handy.
In other words, there is very little to learn from those binary blobs. Life is too short to study some junk code written to run some junk hardware for which you don't have a shred of documentation. And if you really want to learn something, build your own hardware from OpenCores parts and write your own drivers. I think they have a complete set of blocks there to build a decent computer from scratch.
In fact for Debian squeeze, the kFreeBSD port has non-free firmware in it:
http://bugs.debian.org/594940
You'll have to wait for Debian wheezy to get a fully-free Debian kFreeBSD system.
A whole year, they should have had it finished by 1991!
Theft doesn't work that way, but you knew that. Different kernel designs don't work that way either, I hope you know that.
There isn't much urgency to bring out another production quality free software kernel for a Unix like OS, why do you expect them to try? As someone already said, it's a research project more then anything now and has been for a while.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
No. Hurd was started in 1990, Linux in 1991. The GNU project had about 7 years of development and a lot of it was adapted to run on Linux for a feature complete OS.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Imagine all the progress if Compaq hadn't "stolen" from IBM!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Debian ships binary and non-free stuff all the time, including the nvidia drivers, as long as it is legal for them to do so. These go into the "contrib" and "non-free" repositories that aren't turned on by default, but they're still part of the Debian project and on Debian mirrors.
What Debian *doesn't* do is ship patented software where the patent holder doesn't allow free distribution. The s3 texture compression library, mpeg video encoders, etc all live on debian-multimedia.org, where they are maintained and hosted by a separate entity.
And having a distro that works only on hardware like that by default (but still has the ability to load blobs when necessary) makes it easier to find that it, since people will be talking about their experiences.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
..and the flipside is true too.. in any context, people like yourself help ensure the next tyrant's regime.
WTF
No. Hurd was started in 1990, Linux in 1991. The GNU project had about 7 years of development and a lot of it was adapted to run on Linux for a feature complete OS.
Actually you are correct. I had HURD, confused with TRIX, and the date on TRIX was 1986, not sure what date it was started, but I had that confused with the 1983 date on the GNU project.
Looking at the HURD documentation, It looks like HURD doesn't even run on bare metal, but runs on top of GNU Mach microkernel.
It also looks, like TRIX was even developed back in the 70s.
It yeah, its better than I said it was; for HURD. But also much worse since TRIX, the first GNU Kernel, developed back in the 1970s.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Post Interpretation Error: Missing closing parenthesis: post #34580154: line 4: opening parenthesis marked by "<<<Here" in the following: drivers any more. (<<<Here
Understanding terminated due to compilation error(s).
Who cares what job requires it? They do this because this is what they do. It suits their purposes. You have many alternatives that work. It's not necessary that every choice meet all of your criteria.
That's fine, but how about the Broadcom wifi in two slightly older Dell laptops that I own? Both are from 3-5 years old and both are perfectly serviceable laptops. Both are a nightmare every time I install a new distro, because I have to figure out which specific revision of which specific wifi chipset is in the damn laptops. Then I have to find a working driver from god knows where, sacrifice a couple of goats, and in the end MAYBE my wireless will work. On a good day. When the sun is shining on me.
I know some people will say just replace the wifi cards with something more open, but why should I have to replace perfectly good hardware that works?
I'm all for keeping the kernel clean, but please, distro makers... make it easy to find and install the non-free bits that are needed to operate non-free hardware. It's ridiculous to expect that everyone builds their computers from only free and open hardware.
At least in modern ubuntu releases, this is fairly easy and automated with the Hardware Drivers app. This is sorely missing in Debian.
DVD and mp3 playback are supported by lots of completely free software. There are issues in some jurisdictions with patented codecs, and there used to be an issue with the legality of DeCSS, but the code itself is as free as can be.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Removing all the firmware from what we call "main", doesn't mean that they aren't available. It means that if you want them, you need to go pick them up by yourself, and put it in your installation medium (the most easy being an USB key with the HDD media boot.img loaded in). This is why we have "non-free": to separate the good from the bad. I don't know why you are saying "someone else will write a script" when all this is already supported in the default installer (again: you just need to drop the non-free firmware or driver in the medium you are installing from).
No, that script is called ... Debian. You just need to learn how to install a firmware on the installation medium, as I said above. Having a completely free kernel doesn't mean that you can't run some non-free kernels, it just means that the bad non-free software has been separated and push to the non-free repository (we we use to say is "not part of Debian"). This is really a PROGRESS and an ENHANCEMENT, so that we have READABILITY over what is free and what is not. Please do not mistake. Note that creating a USB medium with all the firmware is extremely easy.
I know some people will say just replace the wifi cards with something more open, but why should I have to replace perfectly good hardware that works?
If the driver of the said card is annoying you each time you install a new system, and that you do that often, then the answer is: OF COURSE YES! Why would you keep some hardware that is annoying you? And more than this: why didn't you think about it before your purchased? Purchasing some hardware that are famous for running closed drivers/firmware is pushing makers to do it again. You should simply force you to not do it.
I'm all for keeping the kernel clean, but please, distro makers... make it easy to find and install the non-free bits that are needed to operate non-free hardware. It's ridiculous to expect that everyone builds their computers from only free and open hardware.
At least in modern ubuntu releases, this is fairly easy and automated with the Hardware Drivers app. This is sorely missing in Debian.
Is this a joke??? Man, firmware loading is available since Lenny (that means: more than 2 years), and is available in Squeeze as well. Frankly, you are complaining about a defect that doesn't exist. IT IS extremely easy to load a firmware. But by the way, the netinst installer for Squeeze wont have WPA support (because nobody cared about it), so I guess it wont be an issue, you will have to use a wire anyway for the time of the installation. So it wont bother you at install time! :)
I know what you are about to say: how lame is it to not have WPA in the installer. That's exactly what I said 2 months ago in the debian-release list. But the issue is that nobody cared to work on it, and now it's already too late to include it. So don't complain, and contribute !
2011 will certainly be the year of Linux
As opposed to tight tight situation?
What exactly is it that makes firmware loaded from disk by the driver any worse than firmware loaded from a rom chip by the driver?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Intel drivers are entirely open...
ATI/AMD have open drivers which work reasonably well (and their closed drivers only work at all on newish models)...
Nvidia also have open drivers available, although they are quite poor.
Unless your intending to play games, or do heavy graphics related work, all of the major card types are perfectly usable with open drivers.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I had a Dell laptop of about that vintage (D610 i believe) on which i installed ubuntu, and im pretty sure it worked out of the box with the onboard broadcom wireless...
That said, when purchasing new equipment i will explicitly avoid broadcom because they have been very unhelpful towards those trying to produce linux drivers for their chipsets. I have other systems using Atheros, Ralink, Realtek and Intel wireless chips which work very well (and yes most of them require firmware blobs, but the alternative is that the firmware is stored on a chip instead which would increase hardware costs and probably require a proprietary flashing tool to update).
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
No way. GNU projects do not allow the chaotic early linux kernel development attitude.
Better chaotic development than no development.
It's certainly worked for Microsoft
*rimshot*
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Debian ships binary and non-free stuff all the time, including the nvidia drivers, as long as it is legal for them to do so. These go into the "contrib" and "non-free" repositories that aren't turned on by default, but they're still part of the Debian project and on Debian mirrors.
Did you miss the part where I said "And you've turned on the non-free repository"? I will maintain, that since these need additional steps to enable, that the Debian project doesn't 'ship' them in the same sense as everything that's enabled in the vanilla Debian repository. You have to make changes and a willful decision to install the nvidia drivers and they don't come with a pretty 'enable this driver'-gui.
-- Linux user #369862
That one was supposedly a defect. Though frankly, in a hindsight, I would not be so sure about it.
Nvidia Quadro NVS290 temperature with NV or with no NVidia drivers loaded - >85C
Nvidia Quadro NVS290 temperature with Nvidia binary driver at what used to be default (top performance): >85C
Nvidia Quadro NVS290 temperature with Nvidia binary driver set to dynamic clock management - 65C
Sooner or later you pay for the 20C. I do not know the default windows settings nowdays, but I would not be surprised that the driver used to default to the higher performance ones in the older versions. In any case, that is a video card for which I would not consider running it with the open source driver until it develops at least some power management.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
So what job then requires an OS that is "pure and advanced with pure Free and Open goals in mind" ? Most jobs that I'm aware of require an OS that works; and the "works" part is not negotiable.
Closed-source programs work? That's news to me. You must be referring to a trial-and-error approach to finding out what, if anything, a program does. Doesn't it seem just a tad bit backwards? When I am not playing games, I opt for running programs anyone can read and (try to) understand. When people say that a proprietary program "works", I think: duh. I know who it works for, and it's not me.
I don't know what "UNIX" you use, that has bash as the standard shell, but the two "UNIX" variants we have at work... Solaris and AIX, both use the Korn shell (ksh) as the default and standard shell.
No matter where you go... there you are.
You do if your board runs linuxbios, or whatever they're calling it now. People do care about that, just not most people. Catering to most people isn't the point.
I want my Cowboyneal
Oh, for Pete's sake. Your ignorance of how things work in Debian is astounding.
Don't take that as me calling you stupid. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying you're criticizing that which you know nothing about.
Debian packages quite a bit of non-free firmware in a package named, believe it or not, firmware-linux-nonfree. Debian also has packages for many of the specific wifi chipsets with the word firmware in the package name. Run "apt-cache search firmware | grep firmware" at a bash prompt on a Debian machine, and see all the firmware packages, or go to the Debian site and search the repositories for firmware. The apt-cache search I gave you returns 45 packages with the word firmware either in the package name, and the package name is a combination of the word firmware and either a chipset model or manufacturer's name, or in the package description that tells you exactly what the firmware in the software package is used for.
Choose to include the non-free repositories during your installation and all the non-free firmware packages are available at any time.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Just what does that mean? Are you implying that you can't have all the Debian non-free firmware packages available to you from the beginning of a Debian install? If so, you're completely wrong. All you need to do is choose to include the non-free repository, when asked by the installer if you want it to be available at the start of the installation, and all that firmware will be available at all times.
None of the non-free stuff is hidden, nor does Debian make it hard find. Debian tells you up front that it's available and gives you the option to include access to it from the start of your Debian install.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Well, since you want to be a dick about it, I can too. OS X is certified UNIX and bigger than both Solaris and AIX in terms of users, and it uses bash as the default shell. So you can take your 'real unix' elitism back to the fucking '90s and suck it.
-- Linux user #369862
you just stole my words :)
BASH is the standard UNIX shell.
We were talking about RMS, why bring up the shell that Jason Bourne developed to run his counter-intelligence scripts? ;)
For those that don't remember, Bourne later switched to Perl scripting because, you know, there was a slight chance his system might be compromised and his data decrypted, but Perl code would still be unreadable
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
So the AC (above) was correct : as long as you avoid recent hardware and just do email and Slashdot a completely FOSS machine works fine.
Forget Google Earth, Compositing, and don't even think about doing anything so pedestrian as gaming on your free linux machine.
I've used the opensource ATI drivers. They don't come close.
Your definition of "reasonably well" is wide of the mark by a country mile.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
http://packages.debian.org/lenny/all/firmware-bnx2/download - Download onto a USB stick and insert when prompted, or create your own installation medium with it included.
Firmware is code in Read-Only Memory; hence the "firm". Device drivers are Software.
I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.
I was responding to someone who was suggesting that you don't need to use proprietary drivers, that it's just a want. I said no, it's also a need. It might not be a universal need, but it's still a need. Does that clear up my point?
Yup, thanks for bringing focus back. My stance is that he's a brilliant coder and philosopher. I really like Emacs, and have used it for many many years, although have lost the taste for it when I can have equivalent and more integrated editors in Windows. I'm sure I've used tons of RMS' programs without even knowing it too, but none of them have REALLY taken off like Linux. Two reasons may be that they're mostly made for geeks, and the academic factor is very high. Lisp is not for everyone it seems. Remembering the "GNU Linux" debacle, RMS may also not be the easiest fellow to work with, or to fork his projects.
I do love his idealism and fight against restrictions, despite contemporaries and peers condemning him. He stands for his principles, and they are mostly correct and long-sighted. I think this is his greatest strength and contribution to free software, which is immense if you really think about it, as he even defined the term itself.
My point was that there are other projects that have succeeded more than the core GNU organisation and RMS in producing free software, and maybe that has to do with leadership, luck, or something in between?
Hurd as always been a joke, at least since the late-90s. I don't see any reason to treat it as other than a joke now over 15 years later. It's probably because it's so much easier to create a performing monolithic kernel quickly, and that the users don't really need all that flexibility.
Maybe in the future, Hurd will rise against all oppression. I'd really like to see a less spaghetti kernel rise and shine, but I guess it's damned hard to do well, and not lag in development and evolution compared to alternatives.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It's a semantic distinction, but in the context of the article you're right. Debian is taking things from the stock kernel and moving them into "non-free", so if you need them it'll be exactly like the present nVidia situation.
Still I think it's worth making the distinction that there are some packages that Debian is unwilling to host at all. Debian will distribute non-free things it's legally able to, it just makes you explicitly choose to get them.
snicker, so much wrong
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
We are talking here about proprietary firmware (and drivers) that make certain pieces of hardware nonfunctional. Any proprietary OS has no trouble with that; if Debian default removes those proprietary binaries then certain devices will not work. That's all :-)
Communication with the card/firmware is well-documented (OS driver), so once you push the firmware to the cards you then know how to talk to it and can write a driver for any system to talk to it.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
I agree with you but I could see a middle ground. It would be nice to offer a working clean/free OS that would be easy for folks to innovate on without worrying about licenses. Then it would *also* be nice to have a non-free, more highly functional version of same OS. Does anyone know if they are providing both? If so, this is a non-story.
Well it's a good point, i'm not saying you're wrong; just completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.
It is really just a loose loose situation.
Not true. For those whose hardware is supported, it is a win. They get their Freedom and easier to debug kernel, while they lose nothing. Everybody (well, everybody who wants and knows what he's doing) needs to give a try to Linux-libre kernel because there is no reason whatsoever to have non-libre kernel installed if your hardware works fine with libre one. I had same attitude like you until I tried 100% free distro, but it turned out to work flawlessly on most of my computers. So I wondered why I didn't try earlier. I didn't because some dude like you (who probably never tried) told me that no new hardware will work and that only nut-cases use that. But it turned out that most of new stuff is supported. You don't know until you try. So stop with negativity and use what you like.
Microsoft's official position on standards: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189826
That's how it was always intended to be, they were aimed to high trying to innovate at the wrong step. If I understand it right just about everyone believed microkernel architectures were the next big thing back then, so it's an understandable mistake. It turned out to be more difficult to make it work than anticipated and Linux quickly took over with it's more traditional architecture, the rest is history.
However GNU only picked it up in 1986 and abandoned it as unsuited. So TRIX was developed in the 70s (GNU wasn't around back then BTW) and found unusable by GNU in the 80s leading to an attempt to develop HURD in 1990. I don't see how this reflects too badly on them.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
It's not software that's free, it's you.
Microsoft's official position on standards: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/189826
It's not software that's free, it's you.
But what does that have to do with a software license or where drivers come from? What most people care about is whether it works or not and how well it works.
My personal freedom is not increased or limited by the source of drivers on linux. I don't even use linux. That is part of freedom. I have freedom to choose.
If people like RMS had their way, I would be living an GNU utopia where I would have GNU freedom instead of real freedom and I would have no freedom of choice either.
If using completely GPL'ed software makes you happy, good for you but don't expect everyone to do the same. Give everyone the right to choose what they want to use.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
AFAIK, Apple has NEVER used that BIOS code to boot their OS