New distribution: gNewSense 1.0 [LWN.net]

New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 17:09 UTC (Thu) by ceplm (subscriber, #41334)
In reply to: New distribution: gNewSense 1.0 by madscientist
Parent article: New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

And Fedora, which is still 100% free and because of that is losing in popularity against Ubuntu.

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New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 17:17 UTC (Thu) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

I don't think that Fedora is completely free of binary blobs in drivers.

New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 17:27 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link]

> I don't think that Fedora is completely free of binary blobs in drivers.

If, by "binary blobs", you mean firmware for hardware (that runs on the hardware itself), then yes, Fedora contains non-free code. But under this definition, *all* x86 distros contain non-free code, in the form of CPU microcode.

If, however, you are referring to the likes of the nVidia driver, or the MADWiFi HAL, which are binary blobs that run on the host CPU, then no, Fedora does not contain any binary blobs.

Fedora's policy from day one was that only Free Software will be part of Core. (Or, at the very least, software that has no restrictions on redistribution or use -- hence the lack of MP3 codecs)

New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 19:40 UTC (Thu) by tgb (guest, #745) [Link]

I believe that they're referring to in-kernel binary "blobs", i.e. where a kernel-tree module passes a chunk of binary data without corresponding source, these modules have been purged.

I don't have a source for this, it's just the way I read the announcement.

New distribution: gNewSense 1.0

Posted Nov 2, 2006 17:32 UTC (Thu) by markhb (guest, #1003) [Link]

I may be wrong, but I believe that Fedora doesn't distribute any binary-only drivers; some (notably ATi and nVidia) are available through the third-party livna.org repository, and the Fedora kernel offers the same binary-driver hooks that the vanilla kernel does (at least, the few I've installed seem to work fine), but Fedora itself doesn't directly distribute anything that isn't Free software.

binary only kernel modules

Posted Nov 2, 2006 20:02 UTC (Thu) by scottt (subscriber, #5028) [Link]

The important difference is that Ubuntu is distributing the ATI and Nvidia binary kernel drivers on their CDROM media.
The helps them satisfy user demand but puts the user who loads the module in doubtful legal standing.
Ubuntu's willingness to distribute these binary kernel drivers gives them clear market advantages compared to Fedora, openSUSE and Debian but at what cost ?

binary only kernel modules

Posted Nov 2, 2006 20:57 UTC (Thu) by arcticwolf (guest, #8341) [Link]

Please don't spread FUD (not even unintentionally). :)

The GPL is explicitely not concerned with how software licensed under it is *used*, so as long as a user does not distribute the combination of the ATI or NVidia drivers with the Linux kernel, they're totally fine and not within any kind of "doubtful legal standing".

The only ones that are are NVidia and ATI themselves, although "doubtful" is probably not strong enough there, given that their drivers definitely *are* derivative works of the Linux kernel and given that, thus, they (that is, ATI and NVidia) do indeed violate the GPL by distributing those drivers.

FWIW, the whole thing might put distros like Fedora etc. that distribute those drivers in doubtful legal standing, too - but the *end users* are safe.

binary only kernel modules

Posted Nov 3, 2006 0:47 UTC (Fri) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Yes especially since the FSF stance is more of a moral one then legal.

Even Debian has non-free and contrib repositories. To RMS and Friends this is akin to 'pushing' propriatory software onto users. Instead of, say working on the free gcj stuff, they add propriatory java to non-free and tell people to use that intead.

That sort of thing.

It's nice to have this gNewSense thing. I had the similar thing happen to me between running Debian on my x86 and PowerPC computers.

Now as far as most of Linux goes it's completely identical between the two machines. Even when syncing up my home directories between the two systems I ran into very few incompatabilities.

But non-free software doesn't work on PowerPC generally. So I realy got to see how much I needed propriatory software vs completely free software.

As it turns out I need very very little non-free software. Out of all the drivers and programs that are provided by propriatory software developers the only ones that I use on a regular basis are Flash and Wolfenstien Enemy Territory.

Other then that, thats it. That is the only problems I have with my PPC system.

gNewSense will be nice since it will illistrate what is actually lost if all of a sudden Linux distributions were suddenly completely Free... And the answer for most people is 'not much'.