Time for some nasty questions

Story: Ubuntu open week kicks offTotal Replies: 7
Author Content
Sander_Marechal

Nov 27, 2006
2:27 PM EDT
An open Q&A with Mark eh?! I really hope someone will go there and ask some nasty questions about the binary driver issues. Especially when related to his letter to OpenSuse developers.
rijelkentaurus

Nov 27, 2006
3:35 PM EDT
>I really hope someone will go there and ask some nasty questions about the binary driver issues.

I really hope it's asked in a calm and respectful manner so that progress might actually be made. Juvenile trash talking won't accomplish anything.

>Especially when related to his letter to OpenSuse developers.

How are they related, again?
tuxchick

Nov 27, 2006
4:32 PM EDT
I do wish someone would ask "have you considered banding together with the leadership of other popular distributions, and using your combined clout to pressure hardware vendors into supporting Linux openly and with quality open drivers? Instead of half-baked buggy crap, or nothing at all? Because no one is doing that. Not Linspire, nor Xandros, nor Red hat, nor Novell, nor anyone. Yet that's the one of the biggest obstacles to free software, if not the biggest."
rijelkentaurus

Nov 27, 2006
4:45 PM EDT
I am of the opinion that single manufacturers should be singled out, although this idea is not always well received, and would be quite difficult. Instead of focusing on "graphics cards" or "Nvidia," you focus on a specific card manufacturer and openly recommend against their cards until open source drivers are available. Maybe if the Linux distros banded together for that we could force change. The effort needs to be focused like a laser on one manufacturer. What if several of the Linux distros began to openly recommend Lenovo, and openly not recommending Dell? Would Dell force the capitulation of its suppliers and begin to offer OS drivers?

I dunno, but it's a interesting idea.
helios

Nov 27, 2006
7:07 PM EDT
TC...It IS the biggest issue we face, and while I advocate Freespire about 30 percent of the time for the new user, I am left with a bit of a bad taste because of the way it runs and the way it uses the closed source drivers to get the job done. While it may be the near perfect distro for the computer idiot, is gives alot of us away in doing it.You hit it on the head with an 8 lb hammer.. CNR is the obnoxious loudmouth with the tall hat in front of you in the theatre. No matter how you move or sqirm, there it is in your face. They REALLY need to make that feature more subtle. Making it free was nice, but not when it dominates the entire experience.

..and I hope, oh I do, I do, I do so hope someone does ask this question because I fear it will either go the way rijelkentaurus warns against, or it will be all softball fluff...

Either way, it won't be worth the time in doing or the carpal tunnel in reporting it.

BTW RJ, I recently canceled an 86K order from dell for my company and they didn't even bother to follow up with a phone call or a visit to find out why...86 grand is way too much money to let just slide, but having interviewed many of the Dell top brass (not to include mikey), I am guessing that is a drop in the bucket to them. That's fine...I know a white box manufacturer that is grateful for that little drop. Nvidia and ATI neither are going to open source their drivers for fear the other will see the prize. All we can do is threaten them with complete abandonment once the Linux Hardware comes to market...if it ever does.

h

h
Sander_Marechal

Nov 27, 2006
10:16 PM EDT
Quoting:How are they related, again?


Mark talks about Novell breaking it's promise to the open source community for short term financial gain. Mark broke the same promise for desktop bling. While Mark's broken promise comes nowhere near Novell's in terms of scale, I find Mark's just as bad from a moral point of view. I don't care about distro's shipping binary drivers. I care about Mark breaking his promise to the community not to do that.

Quoting:I am of the opinion that single manufacturers should be singled out, although this idea is not always well received, and would be quite difficult.


Well, you could be in luck here. Rumor has it (aka I read somewhere on El Reg) that Intel is contemplating putting the GPU's on a separate card. It's underpowered when compared to nVidia or ATI but they have fully free drivers and are more than adequate for your average Linux desktop. A separate Intel GPU card means we can use it on any system instead of having to swap motherboards for an Intel one.
rijelkentaurus

Nov 28, 2006
2:44 AM EDT
>I don't care about distro's shipping binary drivers. I care about Mark breaking his promise to the community not to do that

I was of the understanding that the user would be given a choice during install as to whether or not to install the proprietary drivers. I see no issue with that. It's a similar method to what used to be present in the Mepis installer back in the days of it being Etch-based.
Sander_Marechal

Nov 28, 2006
4:02 AM EDT
Aparently not: [url=https://blueprints.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/ spec/accelerated-x]https://blueprints.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/ spec/accele...[/url] The spec in question is still in review but unchanged from when I reported about it earlier this month: http://www.jejik.com/articles/2006/11/is_ubuntu_set_to_becom...

That said, I don't know what going on in the ubuntu mailing lists. It's possible that the decision has been reversed and that Launchpad is out-of-date, but I highly doubt that.

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