Linux-2.6.33-libre released

Linux-2.6.33-libre released

Posted Mar 3, 2010 17:10 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784)
In reply to: Linux-2.6.33-libre released by Janne
Parent article: Linux-2.6.33-libre released

It seems to me that the motivator behind this project is the idea that mere existence of proprietary code is bad in on itself, and it needs to be removed. Even if those bits just sat in the HD unused. I, for one, can't see the harm.

One motivation for Debian's audit of the binary blobs was that the ownership of such data (and ability to redistribute it) was in question. I don't regard that as a harmless situation.

Those two are not opposites, you can have both. You need both. And the people who make software sexy are usually different from the people who work on the plumbing.

Haven't you just contradicted yourself? Maybe the people working on this particular plumbing don't feel qualified or well-positioned to make Linux "sexy". "We" can work on both, and that also means that "we" can be "wasting time" doing both.

It's quite telling that you consider software that looks good and sexy to be a bad thing. No wonder Linux is stuck at around 1% of the market.

No, but it's interesting that you have chosen to misrepresent my position as taking an all-or-nothing choice between "sexy" software and reliable software. When you have people complaining about, for example, the functional state of KDE 4 versus KDE 3 while people bang the drum for "new and exciting" paradigms, desktop effects, and so on, it's clear that someone has to make the case for keeping the fundamental stuff working.

And most people just want stuff that just works, "sexy" or not. The notion that a user interface has to have lots of flashing, whizzing stuff before the average person will consider using it is based on a very narrow view, typically focused through the lenses of Mac OS X and Windows Vista/7, and is frequently unsupported by actual user observations.

If they are a problem, then don't use them.

Fine advice for anyone trying to source components for an open hardware project that doesn't involve just picking up a motherboard and the rest of the off-the-shelf gear from some retail outlet.

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