Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and

Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and

Posted Nov 15, 2006 14:36 UTC (Wed) by Janne (guest, #40891)
In reply to: Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com) by thebluesgnr
Parent article: Ubuntu Developer Summit report: X.org improvements, driver controversy, and bling (Linux.com)

"That's not what people are saying at all. The problem with Ubuntu's actions is that it will have negative repercussions on the whole Free Software ecossystem"

While Ubuntu will enable those drivers by default, it will educate the users about dangers of binary drivers, and it will point them to hardware with free drivers. So it's not THAT bad.

What we have here is a question that should a system be designed for gurus or regural users. It's the gurus and Linux-enthusiasts who care deeply for free drivers. The regural users just want a system that Just Works out of the box. Currently, Ubuntu (or Linux for that matter) does not work for them, since it requires tinkering (like installing drivers for the vid-card). They are faced with a choice of using Windows that has everything up & running out of the box, or they have the choice of using Linux, which requires them to tinker.

The enthusiasts don't mind that tinkering. If they want 3D, they wont have any problems installing the drivers. If they want free drivers, they don't have to do anything. They have it easy. But those regural users? They might want to play a game or two. They would like to have that Compiz eye-candy. But they can't, unless they tinker. So the burden of tinkering has been placed on the people who are the LEAST ready to do it. And that's far from ideal.

This new scheme would simply mean that the burden of tinkering would be placed on the people who don't mind the tinkering, while the regural users (who just want to use the computer with minimium of fuzz) don't have to worry about installing drivers. Don't want binary-drivers? Then don't use them. But why do you want to force regural users to go through the trouble of installing drivers, just because you don't want to use those drivers?

Will this harm free software? Hardly. Right now, many people choose to stick with Windows since it seems to them that they need to tinker with Linux, if they want to use it. THAT harms Linux. If we can move those people over to Linux, it will benefit free software. In short: which harms free software the most:

a) people keep on using Windows
b) people move to Linux, with few bits and pieces of closed software

How would scenario A be better than scenario B? And even in scenarion B, the people who want 100% free Linux, could still have it.

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