Fedora Core 6 review (Software In Review)

Fedora Core 6 review (Software In Review)

Posted Nov 10, 2006 9:24 UTC (Fri) by tajyrink (subscriber, #2750)
In reply to: Fedora Core 6 review (Software In Review) by davej
Parent article: Fedora Core 6 review (Software In Review)

> Fedora never has, and never will bend over and grab its ankles for the
> benefit of furthering binary drivers.

It's not the binary drivers - Ubuntu does come with a few wireless firmware blobs, but eg. closed ATI/NVIDIA drivers are not used by default (though kernel modules are installed). I myself run Ubuntu with the "restricted"-component (about 5 packages all in all) removed, because I don't want to have any non-free software.

Ubuntu is IMO at least currently quite finely committed itself into Free software, while making it a not-too-hard to install proprietary addons for those lazy people who need them - but they are not including those proprietary software pieces in Ubuntu. The proprietary software they include is exactly limited to have install working on machines where it wouldn't otherwise work - basically the idea of "no harm done" I think, though of course one might disagree. And with the door to "restricted" open in Ubuntu, one has to always be vigilant for any possible cases where Ubuntu would be travelling to non-free paths.

The only thing currently I think Ubuntu could improve on this front, would be not to enable restricted component when installing on a computer where none of it is needed for the installation. Of course, if those are not needed, they are not used for anything either - those few firmware blobs are just lying around in some directory.

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