[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Benjamin A'Lee wrote: > On Tue, Feb 13, 2007 at 03:48:47PM +0000, Ben Goodger wrote: >> On 13/02/07, Neil Stone <[1]neil@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> >> >> Ask why Ubuntu is shipping binary drivers and non-free software :) >> >> >> > Will definately be asking something along those lines! I noticed >> > earlier today that they're discussing including a part of VMware in >> > the kernel...is that open sourced or just another binary blob?! >> > >> >> Blob >> >> Ye gods! This is why I switched to Debian - I'm all for allowing the user >> to run proprietary software, and I favour including it where necessary. >> VMWare does not count as necessary, and neither does Nvidia's blobs... > > Of course it's necessary. What about users who can't live without > vital Windows-only software like The Sims and World Of Warcraft? As a VMware user of many years (my initial v0.1 beta licence expired in April 1999), I'd have been very pleased to have had the kernel modules be part of the standard kernel, open source or otherwise. Short of having a separate windows box (which I did for a while, connecting to it using VNC), back then a win95 or win98 installation running in VMware was the only reasonable way I had to read Word/Excel/etc. documents sent to me by clients. Unfortunately it was far too common to need to upgrade a kernel to get support for some other bit of hardware attached to my desktop box or just to fix some bug or other and often I'd find that the binary kernel modules shipped with VMware wouldn't install and the source they supplied to rebuild modules against your own kernel sometimes wouldn't even compile. These days I still use a WinXP installation in VMware, though mostly for other reasons -- in the last couple of months I've set up two different RAID arrays for different clients where the only way to do firmware upgrades reliably was from Windows or to be physically at the hardware. It's not so common to find installation problems after kernel upgrades with VMware these days, but it does still happen occasionally, even with the v2.6 kernels. One day perhaps I'll get a machine that allows me to run fully virtual Xen domains and then it's possible I'll give up on VMware. Until then, if people want to make my life easier by making sure VMware works in whatever kernel I choose to use, I won't be standing in their way. I imagine there will be plenty of others who feel the same way. James -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html