I am not liking mad penguin anymore
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tuxchick Dec 20, 2006 12:50 PM EDT |
It's turning into an apologist rag for proprietary code. This piece doesn't even present anything of substance, it's all "it is this way because I say so." Some specific points: "I have seen no hard evidence of any long-term repercussions outside of a few bruised egos." Other than the lack of good open 3D video cards and drivers, multi-media codecs, and better support for peripherals. We have fewer choices in FOSS-supported 3D video hardware than we used to. So where are the FOSS drivers, codecs, and peripheral drivers that were supposed to emerge from bundling the closed editions in various Linuxes? Xandros has been around longer than any other Linux+ mass-proprietary-stuff distribution. By the reasoning of Matt Hartley and Kevin Carmony and Mark Shuttleworth and all the other lovers of binary blobs, this should have resulted in a veritable cornucopia of FOSS drivers and codecs for everything under the sun. " a beginner-friendly distribution without compromises." Freespire is nothing if not a bundle of compromises. " Obviously, it's a battle between the user's needs and the purists. If history has anything to say about it, it will come down the voices of the end users - not the programmers." Unwilling old guard, bruised egos, purists- pretty loaded language there. I think am crossing Mad Penguin off my list of sites to read. Oh, and Freespire does come in an open source edition without the proprietary crud, which the article might have mentioned. |
| Egon_Spengler Dec 20, 2006 6:00 PM EDT |
tc-Agreement, wholehearted. And, since I was using IE, also got the joy of Intellitext adverts stuffed all over the blinkin' page. I just pulled the Mad Penguin bookmark, lost all faith in the site. Who knows, maybe next week a guest editorial from Rob Enderle? |
| swbrown Dec 20, 2006 6:52 PM EDT |
"We have fewer choices in FOSS-supported 3D video hardware than we used to." Actually, the situation's improved significantly. We used to have nothing, and now we have a reverse engineered Free Software driver for some ATI cards, and much more importantly Intel's 3D-on-motherboard chips which will be important for use on 'Vista-capable' tablets/laptops next year. Hopefully Ubuntu caving in to proprietary drivers won't damage our progress. |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 2:52 AM EDT |
swbrown - And we still haven't had time to see the full fallout from AMD's acquisition of ATI. |
| devnet Dec 21, 2006 8:48 AM EDT |
TC - I was wondering if it was just me on that one too...it's begun to sound a bit like madsoapbox.com to me. The last time I had someone preach to me, I walked out of the church and never came back. I'm fixing to do the same here. |
| tuxchick Dec 21, 2006 8:59 AM EDT |
Yeah, Intel is making promises (still vapor), and maybe AMD will do some nice things with ATI. Maybe. Meanwhile, loading up Linux with proprietary binary blobs and codecs does not lead to fewer proprietary binary blobs and codecs. It's nuts to even think there is a cause-and-effect between the two. I know, the proponents thereof say that will lead to bigger market share, which will lead to more Linux clout, which will lead to more FOSS drivers and codecs. Guess what- Linux already has sizable market more, more than Apple. Unix/Linux have always been far bigger on the server side than windoze, and that made little difference, because they did the same thing that's happening now: they're all running around doing their own things, instead of banding together. Any individual Linux or Unix is easy to ignore. But not all of them together. Devnet, ever since the original founders sold Mad Penguin, it's done downhill. Sad how often that happens. I'm happy for the original owners, they deserve a nice payday. It's too bad their baby has been adopted into a bad family. |
| dinotrac Dec 21, 2006 9:12 AM EDT |
>it's nuts to even think there is a cause-and-effect between the two. I think the argument is that it leads to more linux users, not more free drivers. Personally, I think more linux users is a good thing. More free drivers is an even better thing. |
| swbrown Dec 21, 2006 10:16 AM EDT |
> Yeah, Intel is making promises (still vapor) Intel already made good a while back, you can use their Free Software drivers right now. They're the only 3D vendor currently selling hardware that has. It's an incredibly important development, as basically all hardware being sold in 2007 will have hardware 3D support, as they all want to be able to sell 'Vista-compatible' devices, and for many small form devices like laptops and tablets, Intel's chip will get a lot of use as it doesn't take up much space and is cheap. That means we'll finally start having 3D in Linux out of the box. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 21, 2006 5:48 PM EDT |
>That means we'll finally start having 3D in Linux out of the box. We'll see how it goes. I'd like Intel to start offering stuff on the high end with Free drivers. |
| swbrown Dec 21, 2006 7:45 PM EDT |
> We'll see how it goes. I'd like Intel to start offering stuff on the high end with Free drivers. It'd be great, but even at the low end means we can depend on projects like Beryl for an composited desktop. Being able to hit the low end of 3D guaranteed will be a huge milestone for desktop GNU/Linux. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 22, 2006 3:15 AM EDT |
>Being able to hit the low end of 3D guaranteed will be a huge milestone for desktop GNU/Linux. That's true, and once you start something positive in the GNU/Linux community, it tends to grow into something great. It could be the whisper that starts the avalanche. |
| Sander_Marechal Dec 22, 2006 4:31 PM EDT |
What I really hope is that Intel starts offering their chip on a separate AGP or PCI-E board. I'd bet many Linux folk would buy them, despite them being quite underpowered to their nVidia/ATI counterparts. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 22, 2006 4:33 PM EDT |
>I'd bet many Linux folk would buy them I would. It'd allow a decent upgrade of an older box to at least support a little 3D for wobbly windows. |
| tuxchick Dec 22, 2006 4:44 PM EDT |
Wobbly windows? Why would you want wobbly windows? Those of us in certain age demographics don't want more wobbly things. ahem. |
| rijelkentaurus Dec 22, 2006 4:55 PM EDT |
>Wobbly windows? Why would you want wobbly windows? They're cool, I admit, but nothing special. The CUBE, however, was so incredibly helpful to me. I could have single apps open on a window and switch back and forth with ease...and it looked cool, but that was definitely secondary. |
| swbrown Dec 22, 2006 5:46 PM EDT |
> Wobbly windows? Why would you want wobbly windows? Those of us in certain age demographics don't want more wobbly things. ahem. The wobbly windows are annoying and have no function other than looks, I just disable them. The OS/X-like expose functionality is a MUST though. Once you've used that, you really have a difficult time using anything without it. Window zoom is also a very useful thing to have. E.g., we were demoing our system for wireless patient care by having the PDAs and tablets we were walking around the audience with be VLC servers with the machine connected to the projector the client so they could see us triaging them with the applications real-time. Problem is, a PDA screen looks microscopic on a normal desktop so they couldn't make out the text on the PDAs. Window zoom solves that in a generic way and with an extremely low overhead rather than having to implement it in every application that it'd be useful for and have it be a CPU hog. There are plenty of other uber-functional improvements you can think of to do with the desktop that are only possible by having it OpenGL composited. Basically, without being able to rely on 3D hardware being usable (We need Free drivers), GNU/Linux is stuck in the past when it comes to the desktop. The most promising thing I see is Intel's '3D on motherboard' chipsets, seeing as they do provide Free drivers, and it's likely that just like onboard sound, it'll wind up on the majority of computers even if they have an additional proprietary card. It was really a massively significant move by Intel to release those drivers Free. It doesn't matter how well they perform, as what we need is to have everyone with at least the minimum not a few with the best. |
| dcparris Dec 22, 2006 6:56 PM EDT |
Wobbly windows? MS Windows is pretty wobbly - but unlike the weebles, it does fall down. :-P |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!