We already have Debian
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| ELF Mar 02, 2007 2:20 AM EDT |
What's the point with removal of all non-free Software? If you want a great dristo that is ideologically "clean" Debian undoubtfully is a better choice. |
| swbrown Mar 02, 2007 2:25 AM EDT |
Ideologically 'clean' need not be exclusive to one distribution. It'd be great if they all did that. |
| ELF Mar 02, 2007 3:13 AM EDT |
swbown - > Ideologically 'clean' need not be exclusive to one distribution. It'd be great if they all did that. Point taken. But sometimes pure Free Software just doesn't fit the bill. Especially when it comes to blobs needed by a driver, e.g. wireless cards. The Debian position on this is insane. Take, for example, a wireless card that has a perfect Linux driver (prism54) but needs a binary file loaded to it in order to function within the 811.g specs and/or national regulatory constraints. Not even a kludge like ndiswrapper is needed. It is insane to exclude the blob which can legally be downloaded from the net. That was one of the main reasons for me to switch from Debian testing to Kubuntu. No more hassle to make the wireless card working, even after non-kernel upgrades. Not that I run a lot of non-free software on the machine (except for the w32codecs, of course). But the Debian package management system outshines the RPM camp by far. With all that pure Free Software, a second-class package management system and a crippled KDE implementation -- what is the point for using Fedora? |
| jsusanka Mar 02, 2007 10:17 AM EDT |
"With all that pure Free Software, a second-class package management system and a crippled KDE implementation -- what is the point for using Fedora?" kde isn't crippled in fedora looks just the same as any other distro and has the same functionality. package management system doesn't matter to me - I use smart on any distro and it is the same on any distro just point it to the correct repositories. selinux - that is the number one reason I use - helps with those zero day exploits. xen - only distro that I have seen that works with xen and aiglx and beryl using any desktop kde, xfce, gnome, blackbox, windowmaker. running my web site using a number of vms with tight control using selinux and strict firewall settings. can move them from machine to machine without uninstalling/installing any app software as long as xen is running on the host that is all you need. can't wait for redhat 5 to come out and have a working supported xen implementation. |
| vainrveenr Mar 02, 2007 10:47 AM EDT |
Quoting:Ideologically 'clean' need not be exclusive to one distribution. It'd be great if they all did that.Actually, Slackware and its derivatives such as Vector Linux also seem to be quite "ideologically clean". Slackware's TGZ package-format and pkgtool installation tool were among the originals going all the way back even to pre-2.x GNU/Linux kernels. Slackware's current Slackbook site, http://www.slackbook.org/, refers to Jean Tourrilhes's comprehensive 'Wireless LAN resources for Linux' site, http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/, which has a wide listing of wireless-cards that work with this more "ideologically clean" Linux distribution. The greatest disadvantages of Slackware itself, IMHO, are 1) its poor dependencies checking and resolution compared to Debian and its derivatives (K/X/Ubuntu, Linspire, ... etc) and 2) its being more slowly maintained&released by one benevolent dictator (Pat V) rather than development teams of the respective Debian or Ubuntu distros. The advantages and disadvantages of one distro vs. the other have also been vehemently debated upon elsewhere. One can certainly hope that consumers will predominantly purchase hardware devices (such as wireless networking cards) which remain committed to providing truly free "open source" drivers, thus keeping "ideologically clean" Debian and Slackware. This has been a major past issue with, among other devices, analog winmodems vs. non-Windows modems for the less-and-less prevalent ppp/dial-up services. |
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