* Is ndiswrapper GPL? Yes * Can ndiswrapper use GPLONLY code? Yes * Can ndiswrapper "pass" GPLONLY code (export their symbols) to non-GPL modules? NO * Can ndiswrapper "pass" GPL code without GPLONLY directive to non-GPL modules? YES
The third point is the one that was raised here and that needs to be addressed by either relaxing the GPLONLY directive or rewriting the code.
As I understand it, the issue is not whether ndiswrapper is GPL or not, but whether it can use GPLONLY symbols or not. It is not the same thing. And that is not a Linus decision, it is the decision of the developers that marked their code as GPLONLY to begin with. GPLONLY code is code that is to be used only by modules released under a GPL compatible licenses. GPLONLY requires GPL but it is not implied by GPL, so you may well have GPL modules without GPLONLY requirement. Whether symbols are flagged as GPLONLY is a decision of the developer. Some developers might not have contributed any code at all otherwise. Quite clearly here you have non-GPL code (the proprietary drivers) using GPLONLY code via a passthrough (ndiswrapper). The fact that the passthrough is GPL does not change a thing. You are violating the will of the GPLONLY module developers. Hence the situation has to be addressed one way or the other. Linus simply noted that ndiswrapper has to respect the will of the developers whose code is used, i.e. either they talk to them and get a permission to use their code or they rewrite the GPLONLY code.
Vista is listed at page 10, which does not necessarily mean that it is #10. Look well there is no explicit ranking... In fact, top tens usually mention the winner last.
We may have winner here...
"with 9% of those saying they have considered non-Windows operating systems already in the process of switching and a further 25% expecting to switch within the next year".
Which means that 34%*44% = 15% are switching as we speak... Which is quite remarkable.
The point is that for most PC/laptops you buy, you can choose almost anything, except the OS. Sure you can get some obscure brand, on some obscure website or build your own, but what if you want that particular ModelX-BrandY laptop, just without that particular OS? What if you want to try the OS for a few days before buying? What if you want to touch your laptop before buying it, like in a shop? Tough luck then. Maybe you can claim that OEM are free to choose, and they all have happened to choose not make you choose the OS. Maybe, or maybe not... We know for instance that MS has the bad habit of bending OEM arms behind their back. This is what Mr Kempin, the person in charge of Microsoft's OEM division, wrote to Ballmer in a memo some time ago': "I'm thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux.... they should do a delicate dance".
It is funny that someone complains about users having to tolerate preinstalled software when the same company pushes their software to be preinstalled without users having a say, nor a chance of a refund.
Am I hearing this straight? MS is complaining that OEMs are pre-installing craplets without asking the user? What about the fact that MS bullies the OEMs to install Windows craplet without giving the users any other option? Differently from all the other craplets, Windows is the only pre-installed software without try-and-then-pay scheme, you have to pay in advance for it, and a refund is so difficult that if you manage to get one, you are guaranteed to go on the front page of/.
I doubt. Most likely the laptops available to privates will be of a different color/shape and all the green laptops will be tagged. You can send a policeman around and if he sees a green laptop in a market, it means it has been stolen and he can use the tag to find the owner. If you see a green laptop on ebay, it means it has been stolen, and I doubt you will see green laptops on ebay because ebay is in an agreement with OLPC to distribute the laptops to private customers and will be quite aware of what colors/shapes are allowed and what are not.
Ubuntu is not revolutionary. It is evolutionary......and being an evolution of Debian is a BIG thing...
The main advantages are:
1) It uses Debian apt which is the best package manager, anywhere. And IMO the package manager is by far the most important piece in a distro. You select the software you want from a list, and everything else is done for you. No downloads, no dependency hell, no awkward set-up programs. You want to update ALL your installed software? Hit one button. Want to uninstall? Uncheck the installed package. And they tell me windows is easy... And not only it is easy, it is also powerful. Do you want to compile from source (a la gentoo)? No problem.
2) Unlike Debian, it is VERY easy to install. I.e. it comes with one of the best hardware detection system around, and it gives you a default system with sane settings and a good (but not overwhelming) selection of software. The current installer may not be graphical but it is efficient and intuitive. After all, most part of the installation of windows is non graphical... By the time you get to the graphical part of the windows installer, Ubuntu has finished installing everything (and I mean not only the bare OS, but also the drivers, the settings, and all the main applications). In windows you need several more hours to achieve the same level functionality. It completely smokes windows installer away. And if that is not enough the Dapper live CD will have a nice graphical installer called espresso.
3) Unlike many other distros it is "clean", one app per task, only necessary settings, even the menu makes sense (no cryptic names, but task-oriented)...
4) Unlike Debian, because of the above points, this is a very good distro for beginners since in most cases it "just works" and the default environment is very straightforward to grasp.
5) But, like Debian it is very good also for experienced users, because it is Debian, and Debian is very powerful and flexible. You can configure it as much as you want. And you can even compile your apps using source packages (a bit like Gentoo). For maximum flexibility you can do a server install and move from there. If apt is not enough you even have meta-packages to greatly simplify installation of multiple apps. Try: "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-destop".
6) The main advantage for the experts is that it saves them a few hours in setting up their distro to a decent state. Yes I know that sweating a bit to set up your system from bare metal using Debian/Gentoo/LFS/etc is a good learning experience, but after having done that 7 or 8 times I think I got my lesson straight...
7) Unlike Debian you have a release every 6 months, which is a good thing. It is a much needed intermediate stage between stable (very slow releases = old software) and testing (far to many updates).
The only category of people that are a bit disoriented by Ubuntu are the so called "power-users"... Such users see that everything works but do not find any "advanced tool" (i.e. settings dialogs with lots of checkboxes) and quickly dismiss the distro as a newbie toy... Boy are they wrong...
The only thing missing from a default installation is the interoperability with proprietary "standards" and binary apps/drivers (things like MP3, DVD, skype...). Those are excluded because they violate the open-source philosophy of Ubuntu (and I strongly agree with that) and/or their inclusion might lead to legal problems. Installing such software is the role of external and unofficial tools such as automatix. And it should therefore be obvious why automatix cannot be in the "universe" repository...
So yes, it might not be revolutionary, but it makes common tasks simple and complex tasks possible. Not many distros, on any platform, can claim that... It is evolution......in the right direction......and evolution in the right direction = best genes from best parents = new genes passed to next generation...
Slashdot Mirror
To clarify even further:
* Is ndiswrapper GPL? Yes
* Can ndiswrapper use GPLONLY code? Yes
* Can ndiswrapper "pass" GPLONLY code (export their symbols) to non-GPL modules? NO
* Can ndiswrapper "pass" GPL code without GPLONLY directive to non-GPL modules? YES
The third point is the one that was raised here and that needs to be addressed by either relaxing the GPLONLY directive or rewriting the code.
As I understand it, the issue is not whether ndiswrapper is GPL or not, but whether it can use GPLONLY symbols or not. It is not the same thing. And that is not a Linus decision, it is the decision of the developers that marked their code as GPLONLY to begin with. GPLONLY code is code that is to be used only by modules released under a GPL compatible licenses. GPLONLY requires GPL but it is not implied by GPL, so you may well have GPL modules without GPLONLY requirement. Whether symbols are flagged as GPLONLY is a decision of the developer. Some developers might not have contributed any code at all otherwise. Quite clearly here you have non-GPL code (the proprietary drivers) using GPLONLY code via a passthrough (ndiswrapper). The fact that the passthrough is GPL does not change a thing. You are violating the will of the GPLONLY module developers. Hence the situation has to be addressed one way or the other. Linus simply noted that ndiswrapper has to respect the will of the developers whose code is used, i.e. either they talk to them and get a permission to use their code or they rewrite the GPLONLY code.
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/lkml/#s1-19
Vista is listed at page 10, which does not necessarily mean that it is #10. Look well there is no explicit ranking... In fact, top tens usually mention the winner last. We may have winner here...
There is a bit more detail if you bother reading:
"with 9% of those saying they have considered non-Windows operating systems already in the process of switching and a further 25% expecting to switch within the next year".
Which means that 34%*44% = 15% are switching as we speak... Which is quite remarkable.
They were also shipping Wubi
Wubi on windows Marketplace (Google cache)
The point is that for most PC/laptops you buy, you can choose almost anything, except the OS. Sure you can get some obscure brand, on some obscure website or build your own, but what if you want that particular ModelX-BrandY laptop, just without that particular OS? What if you want to try the OS for a few days before buying? What if you want to touch your laptop before buying it, like in a shop? Tough luck then. Maybe you can claim that OEM are free to choose, and they all have happened to choose not make you choose the OS. Maybe, or maybe not... We know for instance that MS has the bad habit of bending OEM arms behind their back. This is what Mr Kempin, the person in charge of Microsoft's OEM division, wrote to Ballmer in a memo some time ago': "I'm thinking of hitting the OEMs harder than in the past with anti-Linux. ... they should do a delicate dance".
It is funny that someone complains about users having to tolerate preinstalled software when the same company pushes their software to be preinstalled without users having a say, nor a chance of a refund.
Am I hearing this straight? MS is complaining that OEMs are pre-installing craplets without asking the user? What about the fact that MS bullies the OEMs to install Windows craplet without giving the users any other option? Differently from all the other craplets, Windows is the only pre-installed software without try-and-then-pay scheme, you have to pay in advance for it, and a refund is so difficult that if you manage to get one, you are guaranteed to go on the front page of /.
I doubt. Most likely the laptops available to privates will be of a different color/shape and all the green laptops will be tagged. You can send a policeman around and if he sees a green laptop in a market, it means it has been stolen and he can use the tag to find the owner. If you see a green laptop on ebay, it means it has been stolen, and I doubt you will see green laptops on ebay because ebay is in an agreement with OLPC to distribute the laptops to private customers and will be quite aware of what colors/shapes are allowed and what are not.
Ubuntu is not revolutionary. It is evolutionary... ...and being an evolution of Debian is a BIG thing...
...in the right direction... ...and evolution in the right direction = best genes from best parents = new genes passed to next generation...
The main advantages are:
1) It uses Debian apt which is the best package manager, anywhere. And IMO the package manager is by far the most important piece in a distro. You select the software you want from a list, and everything else is done for you. No downloads, no dependency hell, no awkward set-up programs. You want to update ALL your installed software? Hit one button. Want to uninstall? Uncheck the installed package. And they tell me windows is easy... And not only it is easy, it is also powerful. Do you want to compile from source (a la gentoo)? No problem.
2) Unlike Debian, it is VERY easy to install. I.e. it comes with one of the best hardware detection system around, and it gives you a default system with sane settings and a good (but not overwhelming) selection of software. The current installer may not be graphical but it is efficient and intuitive. After all, most part of the installation of windows is non graphical... By the time you get to the graphical part of the windows installer, Ubuntu has finished installing everything (and I mean not only the bare OS, but also the drivers, the settings, and all the main applications). In windows you need several more hours to achieve the same level functionality. It completely smokes windows installer away. And if that is not enough the Dapper live CD will have a nice graphical installer called espresso.
3) Unlike many other distros it is "clean", one app per task, only necessary settings, even the menu makes sense (no cryptic names, but task-oriented)...
4) Unlike Debian, because of the above points, this is a very good distro for beginners since in most cases it "just works" and the default environment is very straightforward to grasp.
5) But, like Debian it is very good also for experienced users, because it is Debian, and Debian is very powerful and flexible. You can configure it as much as you want. And you can even compile your apps using source packages (a bit like Gentoo). For maximum flexibility you can do a server install and move from there. If apt is not enough you even have meta-packages to greatly simplify installation of multiple apps. Try: "sudo apt-get install xubuntu-destop".
6) The main advantage for the experts is that it saves them a few hours in setting up their distro to a decent state. Yes I know that sweating a bit to set up your system from bare metal using Debian/Gentoo/LFS/etc is a good learning experience, but after having done that 7 or 8 times I think I got my lesson straight...
7) Unlike Debian you have a release every 6 months, which is a good thing. It is a much needed intermediate stage between stable (very slow releases = old software) and testing (far to many updates).
The only category of people that are a bit disoriented by Ubuntu are the so called "power-users"... Such users see that everything works but do not find any "advanced tool" (i.e. settings dialogs with lots of checkboxes) and quickly dismiss the distro as a newbie toy... Boy are they wrong...
The only thing missing from a default installation is the interoperability with proprietary "standards" and binary apps/drivers (things like MP3, DVD, skype...). Those are excluded because they violate the open-source philosophy of Ubuntu (and I strongly agree with that) and/or their inclusion might lead to legal problems. Installing such software is the role of external and unofficial tools such as automatix. And it should therefore be obvious why automatix cannot be in the "universe" repository...
So yes, it might not be revolutionary, but it makes common tasks simple and complex tasks possible. Not many distros, on any platform, can claim that... It is evolution...