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Re: [LUG] Things which annoy me - scrollwheel, num lock, flash plugin, X

 

Ben Goodger wrote:
> On 05/07/06, Kai Hendry <hendry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Investigate canvas and SVG in Opera or Firefox if you need to see
>> animated graphics in your browser.
> 
> No. Why do all FreeSoftware&trade; zealots tell everyone to do this? I am
> NOT going to remove Flash and I am NOT going to stop using it. 

Kai only recommended investigating the other options. There's no need to
jump the gun. Yes, it would be good if you did remove proprietary code
but that was not what Kai advised.

> I just
> wanted
> to know how to make it work. Nobody will listen to you if you just say
> "despite the fact that nearly everyone uses it, it's proprietary so you
> shouldn't access flash content."

Nearly everyone on Windows uses it, maybe, but that doesn't actually
matter in GNU/Linux. We aren't looking for popularity, it's about
freedom and quality. Developers can put in years of effort trying to
support a proprietary system and then the developers of that system
simply move the goalposts and invalidate everything that has already
been done. THAT is the reason why proprietary is bad - there is no
reason to trust that what you write will be usable in the future, so why
bother?

I do have the free software Flash plugin installed and it isn't able to
cope with many Flash sites but it copes with some. I'll have to leave it
to someone else to solve those problems - it simply isn't my field.

>> Have a minimal desktop and use a screened uxterm where possible when X
>> crashes.  Avoid anything proprietary. Though Opera's native session
>> saver is handy to recover from.
> 
> You don't get it, do you?  X doesn't crash, I'm not going to switch to
> Fluxbox or whatever you think is good this millenium, proprietary software
> is vital for me, and I have almost zero interest in learning the console
> beyond the locations of sources.list and xorg.conf.

Don't go off the deep end, Ben. We are all trying to be helpful.

> All I wanted to know is why these things happen and how to fix them, if
> possible. The post above yours was useful; yours was exactly like Neil
> thingybob would chuck out if he had absolutely no self-control. This
> kind of
> Freedom To The Point Of Restrcting Users' Freedom is what continues to give
> Linux a bad name.
> 

You are, of course, free to use free software as you desire - including
adding proprietary software to it. That is why Debian has a non-free and
contrib section. The real problem with non-free is that developers feel
their time is wasted because they have no support from the proprietary
developers. Why spend years reverse engineering something when the very
next release could completely undo all your work?

It's a difficult balance and as free software developers are mainly
volunteers, you cannot really blame them for choosing not to work with
those who refuse to help them.

-- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.data-freedom.org/
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/
http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/


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