gNewSense

[Shay Stephens]

then I guess we can use the "market force" of windows to get rid of DRM? When you manage that feat let me know......

I don't know, Steve Jobs seems to be making some actual headway here. He has a market force for sure, and it seems to be attracting others to his side to call for an end to DRM. I think this has the best shot of anything right now.

[deanlinkous]

Does he say it to mean it or does he say it to make the news, and to make users think he cares??? I honestly do not know, I have a guess which I admit is biased but when (if) he suceeds in getting rid of DRM then let me know and I will gladly stand corrected.

Of course some would say that apple only holds a small market share,popular in some of the markets, but still small so maybe that would prove that a small market share can accomplish something if it is simply popular?

[lee797]

I'm glad to see that this thread has created a bit of discussion about free software.

So does gNewSense work for you? I guess a system with not a single proprietary thing on it should be hard to use. For example won't you hear any music which may be mp3 encoded? And I'm not letting you go with "I do not encode mp3 but ogg vorbis only.". I can understand that Mark decided reasonably, for the average user won't bother about copyright issues the least bit

Yeah gNewSense works great for me, I have it running on an old 1.2Ghz
desktop with an Audigy soundcard and a crappy Voodoo graphics card.
I can honestly say that I use it more than my laptop with edgy installed.
Regarding mp3 : well yeah I do listen to them but as you already know I can use free software to do it.

Unfortunately I too still have to use Windows, as my College is sitting firmly on Microsofts ****. It amazes me the amount of money they throw away on proprietary software. So I compromise because I want to finish my education, but on a personal level I will only support free software. I think gNewSense is a great idea and if another 10 totally free distros started tomorrow, I would think that that would be great too. The more freedom the better the way I see it.

[dueyfinster]

Also Feisty+1 will include Linspires Click'n'Run.

Even if the client may be FLOSS itself (I dunno) it's aim is to run restricted software...

No good use from the "free" point of view...
(Heard already of people ditching Ubuntu when Feisty+1 comes out, as that is too commercial and closed for them)

Click'n'Run is all open source, and most of the programs on it are also. Its just another interface to apt, which is superior (IMHO) to anything else I have seen. It lets you rate, comment, see screenshots. You need an account for it, but you can arrange software into an "aisle" (if you ever reinstall ubuntu, all software you arranged in that aisle can be one click installed [I have wanted to do this sooo many times, not just on my home pcs, but ones I am setting up for friends]). It will sync with the Ubuntu software repository and then people can contribute packages, it wll be v olunteer led and free. Their will be commercial software which Ubuntu hasn't really had and their will be the codecs. Apart from some commercial apps, their will be no more less free software then can be used on (X)(K)Ubuntu right now, so some of the talk about c'n'r is all fud. Linspire did an great service to get a legal codec license from MS (for the US anyway, see here), and now it'd like to share it free of charge.

Just to answer that, I have used Freespire as I stated above, and so has one of my relatives (almost totally computer illiterate 70yr. old) and he was able to install stuff no bother, when add/remove adept seems too complicated to him).

[pvdg]

In a recent post, Mark Shuttleworth has announced that (http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/95)

In addition to all of this, we have restarted the effort to produce a flavour of Ubuntu that includes no proprietary drivers or firmware at all. In fact, this flavour will take an ultra-conservative approach to all forms of content on the .iso, whether that be artistic or code. More on that initiative later.

It seems that gNewSense's approach is valuable after all. Does this mean that the only differences between gNewSense and the future gnubuntu, freebuntu or ... will be Firefox/Thunderbird and the use of Lauchpad? Will the two distros be direct "competitors"? Probably not. I don't think the first free Ubuntu will be based on Dapper, and gNewSense is, AFAIK, sticking to this LTS release.