Re: [Fsuk-manchester] Manchester Anarchist Bookfair, 7th June 2008

[Lucy]

On 04/06/2008, Simon Ward <address@hidden> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 01:42:28PM +0100, Lucy wrote:
>  > I think you make some good points. However, I think that Ubuntu does
>  > more than most distros to make their users aware of when they are
>  > using proprietary software. I'm thinking mainly of the driver manager,
>  > which warns the user when they are using non-free drivers and informs
>  > them of the implications.
>
>
> That driver manager serves the purpose of getting something working
>  (admirable) regardless of the freedom.  It explicitly aids the use of
>  proprietary software, as opposed to the situation in other distributions
>  that either don't explicitly offer you the choice of the proprietary
>  software.  It's "convenient", at the cost of freedom.

In my view, it means that less technical users can use a free
operating system. Rather than being faced with a blank screen or a
network connection they can't get to work, they have a working system
without being forced back to Windows. It's not so much convenient as a
compromise - a 90% free system compared to a 0% free Windows system.


>
>  > However, I wouldn't recommend gNewSense to a new user, as I believe
>  > the lack of hardware compatibility and lack of flash would prevent
>  > them from using it.
>
>
> Doesn't it have Gnash?  The current version in Debian Testing works with
>  (some of) YouTube :)

Ubuntu has Gnash and I think encouraged its installation, but
unfortunately when I tried it a year or so ago it broke firefox in
many interesting ways, slowed my system and caused random kernel
panics. In the end I gave up and installed the proprietary
alternative, I know I probably should have filed a bug but as there
were no errors and as it was probably related to the proprietary gfx
driver I don't think it would have gotten far (as yes, I'm lazy ;).

[snip]
>  I have a Thinkpad and an Eee that both run Debian with mostly free
>  software.  The non‐freeness is limited to just the wireless drivers: The
>  Thinkpad with the binary blob, the Eee with the madwifi drivers.  That's
>  the _only_ thing that I can see not working with gNewSense, unless
>  they've done something stupid.  (I look forward to the free ath5x
>  drivers.)

Again, I think that a lack of graphics support and only partly working
flash, as well as the lack of wireless drivers, will be show stoppers
for a lot of users.