desktoplinux.com — Reluctantly, the Ubuntu developer community has decided that with the next version of Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn, it will be including some proprietary drivers. Feisty Fawn's emphasis on "multimedia enablement" appears to be the culprit.
Nov 17, 2006 View in Crawl 4
mthoringenNov 18, 2006
What's to prevent a hardware manufacturer from secretly including malware with their closed-source drivers?
ray901Nov 18, 2006
@ hchaudh1 "I personally like this move as it will open up Ubuntu to more and more people. But I also have my reservations about including prop software in Linux."Why? The way I see it I bought the hardware and the software that runs it (drivers are free). For example: I have an NVidia graphics card and I run Linux. Why should I not be able to use the NVidia drivers for that card. Why shouldn't Ubuntu provide me with an easy method for installing those drivers?I paid good money for my (proprietary) hardware, I expect to be able to use the software that runs it - else I would have forgone the hardware.
speelNov 19, 2006
About f**king time.
rattelerNov 19, 2006
No he's a moron because he's defending the company that makes the hardware he purchased, slacking off and not providing proper drivers. His attitude should be 100% the opposite. "I paid for it. I should get the best drivers and support."If the drivers "just worked" no one would care. The fact is they don't offer the full function of the hardware because the company doesn't want to invest in it, and they don't want the active user base doing it either.Open Source is always better than proprietary because the active base of people trying to solve the problem for free is always larger.Linux Desktop is at 3% because you idiots keep letting the GRFX card developers cheat out on Linux, and as a result... no one develops the apps that people want.
mirag3Nov 19, 2006
agreed, i think this is a great move. From experience, I know that one of the biggest problems people new to linux have is getting their graphics drivers to work. With all the hype about XGL a lot of people want to try, but then they hear that they only have 2D graphics support and need to install ATI/Nvidia drivers. Even simpler, what if you want to watch a movie or even just use an OpenGL screensaver? Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the most tricky and time consuming installation procedures in Linux (I spent so much time in Fedora and Kubuntu building the graphics drivers because you used to have to patch the frickin kernel). If the pros build the support in, it will save everybody a lot of hassle and the gurus a lot of time telling people how to install them. Also, its not like they don't already put proprietary software - all you have to do is enable the multiverse repository in apt and it installs free but closed source software.
mirag3Nov 19, 2006
actually no, if you go into the Ubuntu wifi drivers, you'll see that their proprietary wifi drivers have been replaced by a "placeholder file." (e.g. Broadcom's cards) To enable the driver, you need to enable the multiverse repositories, which are not on by default. However, your point is valid, as all you need to do is change a line in sources.list and apt downloads the driver for you
aristotle0dudeNov 19, 2006
Right, so nobody here understands what proprietary means then? Proprietary products are not well documented for interoperability. We use the term proprietary and non-proprietary hardware correct? Do you see any open source hardware out there? No. Documentation and interoperability is what determines whether something is proprietary or not.
t3st3rNov 26, 2006
From the contrary side, this is incompatible with GPL and actually very few people likes when NVidia and ATI about to decide all on their own instead of you.And with closed-source drivers you're completely depending on vendor.If vendor is unwilling to implement some feature, support some interface or fix some bug or security flaw, you're in stuck.So, I'm at very most TOLERATE closed drivers and will prefer open ones.That it is.If you're not agree, you can use MacOS or Windoze as well, they're same pieces of closed proprietary sh!t.
mykeyspaceJan 13, 2007
What is wrong with proprietary drivers being in the non-free repository? It's not _that_ hard to install them. I think the main reason the ubuntu-devs decided to include those drivers as "standard" is that a lot of new users complain that their system is slower than windows (or at least not as fast as it could be). Because they don't know they use the "wrong" drivers.But I feel that if it "just works" people tend to not care about the open drivers/specs any more, which is a problem.SOLUTION: If Ubuntu ships with proprietary drivers by default, they should make it so that people could tick a box "send ati/nvidia an email requesting open specifications (or open drivers)" upon installing the driver.