[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ben Goodger wrote: > On 3/15/07, *Matt Lee* <mattl@xxxxxxx <mailto:mattl@xxxxxxx>> wrote: > > On Thu, Mar 15, 2007 at 12:04:19AM +0000, Ben Goodger wrote: > > > I was and am in favour of shipping vital non-free drivers, but > unlike nearly > > every other distro Debian does not ship unnecessary non-free > software. When > > Ubuntu started doing that, I jumped ship. > > I believe Ubuntu always did that. > > > <rant length="verbose" type="essay" style="neil-williams"> :-) > Certain e.g. networking drivers are vital for a system's operation and > should be shipped though easily removable. Other things, such as Adobe > Flash Player, nvidia-glx, etc are not vital and the user should have to > make their own affirmative decision to use them. Both should be > distributed within APT repositories, for the sake not only of user > choice and facilitation but of of trying to at least wrap the blobs up > in debian-shaped packing so they behave as nicely as can be expected. Yup, I agree... after all, it's about choices... if you choose to install binary blobs, so be it.. but you don't have to.. > Obviously, gNewSense would be a very good applicant for use on Dell > hardware (Ubuntu-inherited nastiness aside) if it can provide 100% > hardware support for Dells. I am not confident that it is capable of > this, but Debian is certainly capable of running all the hardware > connected to my system out-of-box (notably unlike Windows, requiring two > hours and eight driver discs.) This is why I prefer Debian in general, > and is why I favoured Debian in the Dell survey. TBH, Dells driver CD's for windows are actually quite good.. you insert the CD, it detects your hardware and gives you a list of drivers to install based upon it's detection. Still, 1 hour and 2 CD's (XP and Dells drivers) > Actually, though, I don't want anything preinstalled on my computers. > Given Dell's track record of bundling useless rubbish on their Windows > machines, I would not trust them not to fiddle with a Debian install. I hear that.. > The trick, then, is to get Dell to use hardware supported well by, say, > kernel 2.6.15 and above. This is likely the real issue for sysadmins: > confidence in their hardware's ability to be run by their choice of OS > without inane tweakage. To be fair, I have successfully run a few distros on a number of Dell machines without major issues... but yes, I would have far more confidence in the whole thing if i just knew that the hardware would play nice with the software out of the box. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.2 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFF+PiGz3Av8JKgzxQRAnNBAJ9YmUiS2qKkuL0WB3PLEg58xM7z6gCfcXFP SnUxmZP0d5HHWxkL/z+F06Q= =/u8E -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- 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