Henrik has a great post about non-free drivers. Read it.

There is non-free software in the world and we have to live with that
fact. The question is not whether we put it on a server or a CD but
whether we are trying to push the world in the right direction or not.

Let me come out and say: I support Mark’s post. I think everyone making a huge deal of this needs to take a step back and relax. You guys are just drama queening (yes I just made that a verb). Every word said isn’t life or death, and as mature individuals we all need to let certain things just roll off. I believe most OpenSuSE developers are rational people with independent thought, and no doubt if it said something to offend them, could move past it just as easily.

People that are overreacting to this are just fostering a hyper-sensitive community, which in the end could never hope to achieve productivity, nor be competitive.

Digg this story

SSH Forwarding

One thing I see a lot of people in the dark about is “SSH X Forwarding”. Yes, it sounds scary. But it really just means that you can run applications from any computer that has an “X client”. Yes, that also sounds scary. But if you are running Ubuntu as a desktop, then you are running an “X server”. For example, at work I have a vmware-server that I have various operating systems so I can test web layouts in different browsers.

# ssh -X sharms@mywork.com
# vmware

When I run this, even though vmware is installed on my system at work, I can use it from my laptop! Check it out:

Yes. It was that easy. And for another neat feature, now I took a screenshot with Gimp, which is basically photoshop for linux. I needed a way to upload these files to my webhost. So I went to “Places -> Connect to server” and filled this in:

Then all I did was drag my files into the folder, and bam, I uploaded my files. Easy. Cool. Ubuntu.

FreeNX
For some people, ssh X forwarding may be a bit slow. If you don’t have a fast connection, you can try FreeNX instead.

Step aside Stephen Colbert. Since I bashed binary drivers in my hot hot picture, I figured I would give the other side. Here are some reactions around the internet I have seen:

Satire: “the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule, or the like, in exposing, denouncing, or deriding vice, folly, etc.”

I support binary drivers in the case of there is absolutely no alternative and it is an essential service (in my case wireless). Including binary drivers when there is a real chance to get AMD to open source the ATI drivers: asinine. Those who misunderstood my previous post, sorry I can’t help you.  Let me also further clarify, that I think beryl / compiz is an awesome innovation, and I use it on some systems.  Enabled by default, no, but if there is a nice little applet: rock on.

Yeah, thats the best zoolander pose I can do.

DaveJ writes in his blog “I stand corrected. It does however still ship freedom impacting things like the binary ipw3945 daemon.” Sorry to have to bring you back to reality, but this is just getting out of hand.

Freedom != Not using hardware

If your idea of freedom is sitting there with no network connection because you have no drivers for it, then I am simply astounded. Not everyone has the resources to go out and buy a laptop that has all free parts.

Redhat and friends – You are simply hypocrites. Remember OLPC that you guys are championing? Yes, their Marvell wireless card has proprietary drivers. Get off your horse.

I thought I would give people a run down on Fedora Core 6. I should probably share first that I am not a rapid ubuntu fanboy, but an objective computer software enthusiast. In fact, as my KDE fans know, I manage rather large deployments of SuSe systems, and I am definately not tied down to one concept or solution.

Enter Fedora Core 6

So I was browsing digg and distrowatch as usual, and I have been seeing a lot of reviews and articles on FC6. Admittedly, last time I used Fedora was back around version 2, but at some point I got lost in Gentoo and Debian and left it behind. The reviews I read were all very good, so I figured it’d be worth a dvd so why not.

I will be the first to admit, I have been out of the Redhat scene for awhile, but I am always a fan of the underdog. With the recent Oracle news and Novell news, I figure who better than Redhat for me to advocate?

What I missed

From start to finish to formatting again, Fedora was lacking for me in key areas.

• Wireless – The installer didn’t appear to let me use my wireless card to use the extra repositories. Once installed, the configuration dialog was not sufficient and gave errors about setting a baud rate. In Ubuntu, my wireless works without any configuration, and once installed I am able to ’sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome’ and life is dandy. Thanks Ubuntu for including my firmware!
• Graphics - AIGLX and the “desktop effects” tab were a great idea, but they don’t work on my laptop. I click the button, and it doesn’t even give me reasonable feedback as to what to do, or why it didn’t work. Beryl works for me with XGL, so it seems if you are going to take the 2 hours to write a AIGLX applet, you could do fallback xserver-xgl configuration for those of us who have ATI cards without the luxury of being supported under the free driver
• Resolution – my laptop is a native 1280×800. Fedora appeared to detect it, but once booted my fonts and display were stretched out and distorted. Ubuntu configures this right off the bat correctly.
• Bootup – Ubuntu did something in Edgy I have been waiting for forever: hid the kernel text. Nobody reads those first few lines before the splash anyway, why display them? Fedora took no such liberties. And to those who say it’s a feature: if you could read and understand that information, you can find it anyway. Argument invalid.
• Package Management – Yum has improved, but if I had to recommend a solution for massive deployment and ease of use, apt still gets my vote. Maybe someone should let them know 1990 called and wants their package management war back, apt won, lets come together and standardize, rather than have thousands of software programs having redundant packaging efforts.

What I didn’t miss

• Art – Fedora has a cool new theme that is very nice and consistent, and is very stylish and eye catching. Maybe blue is just a better color? All I know is if I ran Fedora, it would look pretty cool. And people like things that look shiny and cool.
• Installer – I guess I am just old school, but the graphical installer I found to be much better than a live cd install. It just seems a bit more mature and streamlined then Ubuntu’s live cd installer. No I don’t have anything tangible, just feel.

Conclusion

This is just one of those instances were you see screenshots and reviews, and think the grass might be nice on the other side, but find out what you already had was far and above better. So I am now in the process of throwing edgy back on. As for RedHat, I hope you guys keep fighting the good fight, and the principals RedHat has with respect to the community make me want to have hope for you. Maybe hire a few usability testers (they cost less than $10,000 per release, but bad press costs much more?)

Update: For clarification, I am not here to sit on a cross with firmware and fight the free fight. I use Linux because I like technology. And I have no problem paying for a product I use.  In a nutshell, if someone builds my house because he loves building houses, it doesn’t make is work worth nothing, and I have no problem paying for that work.