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:
” “A 3D desktop—while great eye candy—will not solve some of the major problems new Ubuntu recruits have”
Are they insane? The 3D desktop is the reason I have converted as many windows users to Linux using Sabayon. Yes it is eye candy but it is also something Microsoft has been promising for a LONG time and the Linux community accomplished it in a matter on months. I think that says the most.”
“Yes, this will get digged down a lot, but what turned me off from Ubuntu was the fact that it didn’t come with native drivers for many things (network, 3d card, and so on).
I think the first and foremost thing an OS should provide is access to the hardware, not philosophy. And this hardware support should come by default, without having to RTFM and spend your time downloading and configuring stuff.”
“Ugh. and here lies the reason why Linux is NOT Number One. Because there are a bunch of developers banging on tables about Free and Non-Free Drivers and such. The article totally misses the point. People who are looking for an alternative to Windows or OSX only want one thing: Something that works! I for one love Ubuntu.”
Related posts:
#1 by thebluesgnr on November 14, 2006 - 6:25 am
http://lwn.net/Articles/162686/
#2 by Chris Cunningham on November 14, 2006 - 11:36 am
That would be the “some idiots on the forums” argument.
Nobody’s arguing about things like binary blobs in network drivers. They’re arguing about the explicit endorsement of nVidia and ATi’s proprietary, NDAd, decompile-this-and-go-to-prison graphics card drivers where a free alternative already exists. If this becomes conventional wisdom then kiss goodbye to Intel’s goodwill in providing high-quality free drivers for its own chipsets, with everything else following as per the above-linked LWN article.
– Chris
#3 by zimbatm on November 14, 2006 - 12:48 pm
The problem is not really the users. Even on windows, you’ll have to install some drivers if your computers is recent enough that windows doesn’t integrate them. Users comming from Windows can’t expect for linux that it will work without any intervention when you have to do it in their previous OS.
The real problem is that if a wide spread distribution like Ubuntu opens the “binary drivers” door, it will get much more harder to revert back. Users will get used to it and other distros pushed to play the same game because they want to be on the same level as Ubuntu. If you do that, you loose all the arguments to push hardware vendors to release their driver’s source code. The graphic card market is particular because users don’t really have the choice. But you risk that other markets will get contaminated by that closed approach.
Get real. Provide a small scripts that install those drivers but don’t use them by default. It’s not like the graphic cards won’t work with their open source drivers. They’ll only have limited 3d support.
Finally, I think that linux has much more long term goals than Windows and OS X. Linux don’t need to make money (even if Canonical does but that’s another matter). Providing closed source drivers is kinda short sighted because of the previous arguments IMHO.
#4 by Mikkel Høgh on November 14, 2006 - 2:08 pm
What free alternative? I’ve you’ve heard of any open source driver for nVidia cards that will enable me to actually use the card for it’s purpose, 3D-accelleration, please do tell.
I know “real” Unix geeks don’t care about pretty stuff like Beryl/Compiz and 3D-games, but other people – me included – do.
#5 by Joseph on November 14, 2006 - 2:34 pm
The free alternative is not to buy nVidia. Notably, the Intel chips have Free drivers and generally Just Work–right out of the box! This is because, while the end user may not necessarily be a programmer and find the source code useful, the Linux programmers around the world [i]are[/i] and can fix and enchance things quickly (as a side note, how about that last nvidia security vulnerability that’s been sitting around for years?)
#6 by jldugger on November 14, 2006 - 6:25 pm
Whatever happened to solving bug number 1? Binary drivers are a problem, but going negative is counter-productive. Its time wasted telling people what they can’t do, instead of what they could be doing instead. This amounts to blaming people for their desire to run 3d intensive applications like Beryl or games.
We should commend and encourage people (if only verbally), whenever they help promote free drivers. ATi, much reviled for their poor binary drivers, have offered specs for older cards. Intel seems to have done something similar with their entire line, although its inferior in performance to the best ATi and nVidia have to offer. We should also point out where they can do the Free software world one better, of course, but it shouldn’t be the only message they hear from us. And we should assist and promote people working on reverse engineering previously closed hardware. I can think of at least one example in which the closed source driver was abandoned in favor of a community built ethernet driver. When people announce they intend to reverse engineer nvidia, we shouldn’t publicly scoff, knowing fully well the magnitude of the endeavor, but offer public assistance to help these people overcome the nearly insurmountable challenge, because it is one of the biggest obstacles left to Bug number 1. That doesn’t have to mean writing code, it can be something as simple as passing a URL to friends, donating money should they need a legal defense fund, or something as simple as trying their half-finished product. Anything less is an endorsement of the status quo on those platforms.
Generally speaking, shopping for a Linux laptop is a crap shoot. What would help here the most, is if in a year or two one of the Linux laptop vendors stopped the unsustainable practice of selling their effort of putting Ubuntu on a Thinkpad and started negotiating with ODMs to spec out a completely open hardware laptop. They’ll have to sacrifice high performance video chipsets for a while, but nVidia in particular can’t ignore customer demands for much longer, especially when Intel is already doing something positive for us.
Closed hardware is a problem. A difficult problem we might not be able to solve united, but one we certainly can’t solve divided.
#7 by jldugger on November 14, 2006 - 6:25 pm
You know, that thing had a lot more white space than what appears
#8 by mindwarp on November 14, 2006 - 6:35 pm
Actually that was one of the better comments I have got, although I think the end line you ripped off from brave heart, but I agree with you.