What about gNewSense?

[heroidi]

Is it worth trying or using because Stallman uses it?

[hanzomon4]

No...

[swoll1980]

The fact that Stallman uses it, would be a perfect reason for me not to.

[itreius]

gNonSense

[ibutho]

Is it worth trying or using because Stallman uses it?
I think its worth trying, but its not so different from Ubuntu. To me, its just Ubuntu without any proprietary stuff.

[perce]

Welcome to the new Stallman bashing thread :(

[moster]

Welcome to the new Stallman bashing thread :(

Before was thread of Stallman bashing?! I was not expecting that here. Stallman is idealist.
I love the guy, I look at him as high priest of free software foundation. What to expect from guy who is fighting proprietary software whole his life. To work in mono? :) If he is not that rigid how he is, he would sold out long time ago. We need somebody like him, to be some straight line reference.

[hanzomon4]

We do.. but his ideal distro would be as good as dumping a gallon of year old pee in my computer.

[directhex]

Before was thread of Stallman bashing?! I was not expecting that here. Stallman is idealist.
I love the guy, I look at him as high priest of free software foundation. What to expect from guy who is fighting proprietary software whole his life. To work in mono? :) If he is not that rigid how he is, he would sold out long time ago. We need somebody like him, to be some straight line reference.

gNewSense ships Mono by default

And http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/good-gcds-beginning-with-significant.html shows what happens to high priests

[swoll1980]

I look at him as high priest of free software foundation. .
Free software isn't a religion. I look at him as the head loony in charge.

[Pogeymanz]

I admire Richard Stallman and am also saddened to see so much RMS bashing.

He's a good guy with very good points about copyright and freedom and we should all be thanking him.

It's true that most of us "in the real world" need some proprietary software, but that is no reason to bash him. I personally believe that an OS should be free and open, then you can use whatever apps get the job done. But there is no reason to close the OS: it wreaks of Big Brother control over your machine.

</offtopic>
<ontopic>
I've never used gNewSense, but it's been on my list of distros to try. I've just been too busy to play with new distros lately.

[K.Mandla]

I admire Richard Stallman and am also saddened to see so much RMS bashing.
Same here, but I am not surprised to see so much invective directed toward any different point of view. For a community that prides itself in embracing principles like respect and freedom, the Community Cafe is occasionally quite abusive.

Back on topic, I have tried gNewSense and found it no less (but also no more) usable than the Ubuntu desktop that was current at the time. In my humble opinion it would be ideal for a non-profit organization or any other group (or person) who wants to avoid any and all risk of outside interference or obligation.

On the downside, it's also obvious that it's intended for a slender range of hardware components. So its potential can depend on your machine. I have a feeling the people who are interested in it would be willing to take the time to build a system that would use it to its fullest.

[Viva]

I admire Richard Stallman and am also saddened to see so much RMS bashing.

He's a good guy with very good points about copyright and freedom and we should all be thanking him.

It's true that most of us "in the real world" need some proprietary software, but that is no reason to bash him. I personally believe that an OS should be free and open, then you can use whatever apps get the job done. But there is no reason to close the OS: it wreaks of Big Brother control over your machine.

</offtopic>
<ontopic>
I've never used gNewSense, but it's been on my list of distros to try. I've just been too busy to play with new distros lately.

Well said

[nitehawk777]

his ideal distro would be as good as dumping a gallon of year old pee in my computer.

Oooooooooh,....
now I have this picture stuck in my head,...........(eeeeeewwww)!

[Ozor Mox]

At least hold a tiny bit of respect towards someone who did a lot to help create the operating system we use and the idea of free software. Perhaps more people should have a point of view with a bit more bite than the meek "ohh well I just like to use what is most convenient for me" approach that we all take (myself included)... Sure, it's only software, but the same attitude applies to plenty of other areas in life.

[dragos240]

The theme looks like ubuntu's.I think it actually might be based on it, and the theme is pretty ugly, considering it really doesn't blend well.

[unoodles]

I tried it a while back, an I was pretty surprised at how well it worked. I had 3D acceleration and wireless. Unfortunately, it turns out that my ethernet driver (tg3) has some issues surrounding the firmware.

[hanzomon4]

I admire Richard Stallman and am also saddened to see so much RMS bashing.

He's a good guy with very good points about copyright and freedom and we should all be thanking him.

It's true that most of us "in the real world" need some proprietary software, but that is no reason to bash him. I personally believe that an OS should be free and open, then you can use whatever apps get the job done. But there is no reason to close the OS: it wreaks of Big Brother control over your machine.

</offtopic>
<ontopic>
I've never used gNewSense, but it's been on my list of distros to try. I've just been too busy to play with new distros lately.

Good point... No need to bash the man. Trust me it sucks when you take someone for granted and you don't realize it until they're gone... *moon walks to the kitchen*

[moster]

gNewSense ships Mono by default

And http://opensourcetogo.blogspot.com/2009/07/good-gcds-beginning-with-significant.html shows what happens to high priests

Ok, ok.. he maybe drunk or something. He is no roman-catholic priest :) I even would not be suprised if he really gone mad... Point is he is not evil. Thinking of better tomorrow.
I was making comparison with priests because they too exaggerate with some sins for example committed in mind after seeing beautiful woman. They also rumble about past all the time.. Hope you get what I mean.

He is head of free software foundation with reason, and he deserve our respect. Some of you forgot that linux stands for kernel and free software for 95% else you have now installed. If free software developers respect him it is not right that we as simply users do not!

If everything was like he want, we were now all using gNewSense. Opposite of that, we would using software that we would must rent and pay as monthly due. I remember microsoft try that as "price of cup of coffee every day..."

I am sorry for large chunk of off topic but this is just not right. There must exist counterweight of total proprietary OS like windows. And it is perfectly OK that we have gNewSense.

[Paqman]

Is it worth trying or using because Stallman uses it?

Is it worth growing a beard because he has one?

I don't really see the point in completely "free" distros, except as a theoretical exercise. You can't really have a practical multi-function computer with totally free software, there's just too much proprietary guff out there that you need to be compatible with.

[OutOfReach]

I admire Richard Stallman and am also saddened to see so much RMS bashing.

He's a good guy with very good points about copyright and freedom and we should all be thanking him.

It's true that most of us "in the real world" need some proprietary software, but that is no reason to bash him. I personally believe that an OS should be free and open, then you can use whatever apps get the job done. But there is no reason to close the OS: it wreaks of Big Brother control over your machine.

I completely agree. The man has accomplished a lot of things that has allowed us to actually be where we are. Some people here can just get very immature by judging him by things like appearance or habits, rather than what he has done.

ONTOPIC:
I personally have never used gNewSense...but it does look interesting.

[DeadSuperHero]

I tried compiling KDE's /trunk on gNewSense deltah. It was somewhat of a nightmare for me, because although I got the gist of what I was supposed to do I started getting errors while compiling kdelibs. Turns out it was a cmake error and nothing could be done.

I like alot of the concepts of gNewSense and what it stands for, but these are my problems:

1) Outdated software - Ships with either KDE 4.0 or 4.1 in repos.

2) No libre kernel. (Which really, I believe it should have by default.

3) Binary incompatibilities and segfaults due to different build versions (Boo! Trying to build and package KDE 4.3 never happened for me because of this, the cmake errors kept me up for days trying to resolve it and do something nice for the community)

4.) Mono. I don't have much problem with mono in and of itself, but for a GNU-sponsored Linux distribution, it's not exactly living up to the ideals...

[moster]

Free software isn't a religion. I look at him as the head loony in charge.

Where were you when history was made? :)

He was on the battlefront next to linus so that you can now have your Free shiny OS. And now when got old and full of wounds he being bashed. Sad.

[hanzomon4]

Is it worth growing a beard because he has one?

I don't really see the point in completely "free" distros, except as a theoretical exercise. You can't really have a practical multi-function computer with totally free software, there's just too much proprietary guff out there that you need to be compatible with.

I think gNewSense can serve as a good benchmark to see how far foss has come in regards to your system. Thinking about it the only closed driver I need to run Ubuntu on my Macbook Pro is the nvidia driver and once nouveau is "ready"...

I wish to revise my statement... gNewSense is like taking a crap in the carrying case, the computer works but you feel a little let down

[Grant A.]

Honestly, gNewSense is rather pointless as a project, seeing as Ubuntu now ships with an install free software only mode.

Actually, it was pointless to begin with. Why use gNewSense when Debian exists?


I'm not trying to downplay the hard work that Paul O'Malley and others have put into it. Indeed, it is a great distribution, but rather than wasting valuable man-power on something that already exists, it'd be best for the community as a whole to merge back with Ubuntu. The more programmers/bug testers we can get, the better.

Branching off when something already exists is actually one of the fatal flaws of Open Source Software. This is why projects such as Planeshift became closed-source early on.

[hanzomon4]

Wait... I pretty sure Ubuntu killed of it's free-Ubuntu (whatever it was called) in favor of supporting gNewSense

[jomiolto]

I don't really see the point in completely "free" distros, except as a theoretical exercise. You can't really have a practical multi-function computer with totally free software, there's just too much proprietary guff out there that you need to be compatible with.

I guess that depends on how you define "multi-function computer". I think the only proprietary packages installed on my laptop are flash and some non-free kernel modules (none of which are actually used -- I'm just too lazy to remove the package(s)). Flash I use only occasionally to watch a YouTube video or to play Dice Wars, and I could probably replace it with swfdec or gnash without major problems.

Otherwise it's all free software and I'm not really missing anything.

[zipperback]

In my opinion, the best advice I can give to you about trying gNewSense is to download yourself a copy of it, and give it a try.

Do all the same things that you would normally would be doing with your distribution of choice, and take notes about it. Try some things out, install some applications, uninstall some applications, change some settings, test the sound system, test the microphone, see if you can mount SD cards, compile some things, etc... In general, we all have different preferences and expectations as to what will work best for each of us.

Do I personally thing it's worth trying out? Sure why not. I personally feel it's a good idea to see what others are doing with their distributions.

I personally like Ubuntu, it's easy to install, has a great community for support, and its meets my needs as to what I want from a distribution.

Only you can determine what will meet your needs the best.

I would be interested in hearing back as to what you decide about gNewSense.

I hope this helps you.

- zipperback
:popcorn:

[DeadSuperHero]

I WANT to like gNewSense. But for now, it just isn't gonna happen.

I'd like to switch to an entirely "free" distro someday, but realistically I'm going to have to wait for the following:

-FOSS drivers (graphics, sound, wifi) to be completed, with compatibility for the Linux-libre kernel
-GNU toolchain built specifically against linux-libre to possibly cut down on possibly segfaults.
-Consistent packages for the latest releases of things like desktop environments. Gnome wasn't so bad in gNewSense, it's just that I want KDE instead. Heck, as far as I know all of KDE is GPL'ed or GPL-compatible, and none of it is specifically dependent on Mono, which brings me to my next point:

-No Mono. I know, that statement right there may be flamebait. I have no problems with Mono as a language. However, I feel until everyone gets a full guarantee that Microsoft won't sue the Mono project, distributions that ship Mono, or Mono users, and that Mono will remain free and open for everyone. That's my view on it. The Community Promise is a good start, so let's see how that holds up.

-Include some of the lesser-known FOSS apps from kde-apps.org. It's easy for me to build them myself, but doing so isn't really user-friendly when you think about it.

Anyways, I'm done ranting.