gNewSense 3.1 Available For Free Software Purists

[phoronix]

Phoronix: gNewSense 3.1 Available For Free Software Purists

The latest release of the FSF-sponsored gNewSense Linux distribution is now available for those that can get by without needing any binary blobs for their hardware drivers or non-free software...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTU5ODQ

[andyprough]

Different from plain Debian?

I haven't run gNewSense, but I did run Trisquel for about a month last year on a box. I couldn't see much difference between that and running Debian without non-free repos.

I don't really care about trademarks - I think that is a giant red herring, and in fact I think it gets people into trouble running non-secure versions of Ice Weasel without proper security updates. I'd much prefer anyone in my office running straight Firefox, and in fact in the past I've forbidden the use of the older versions of Ice Weasel from the Debian stable repos.

I may sound like a newb on this issue, but I'm not - I just don't see the difference when I avoid proprietary software by running plain Debian. I know you can implement binary blobs in the kernel if you want on Debian, but you certainly don't have to, anymore than you have to use non-free repos. Am I missing something, or is this just the "militant FSF crowd" going a bit overboard?

[stiiixy]

To me, having a 'pure' system is a point, or peak, for which you can then chop and choose your distro (as a distro maker or just user) piecemeal as to suit your requirements. If you need a workstation to do heavy lifting GFX, you get some nVidia cards and Intel CPU's, install the nVidia drivers and get to work. You can do that on the 'pure' systems if you want, or a system that pre-packages binaries, like Ubuntu. But having that pristine distro gives one that furtherest-left/right (it seems it can be both!) border, and you can then do as you please from there-on. Fill in the gaps if you're missing them. And quite likely that will involve proprietry software, but at least you can run it on a legal system!

[randomizer]

I don't really care about trademarks - I think that is a giant red herring, and in fact I think it gets people into trouble running non-secure versions of Ice Weasel without proper security updates. I'd much prefer anyone in my office running straight Firefox, and in fact in the past I've forbidden the use of the older versions of Ice Weasel from the Debian stable repos.

It's not really a red herring. Mozilla won't allow Firefox branding unless they approve all modifications to the source, and that includes backporting security patches to the decrepit version of Iceweasel in Stable. Not only does that apparently violate the DFSG, but it's utterly impractical to maintain software when you need a corporate entity peeking at everything you do and rubber stamping it.

[andyprough]

Mozilla won't allow Firefox branding unless they approve all modifications to the source, and that includes backporting security patches to the decrepit version of Iceweasel in Stable.

Talk about circular logic - "we need to use Iceweasel because Mozilla won't allow us to backport security patches (without approval) to our decrepit version of Iceweasel".

Still sounds like trademark issues are a red herring in some other ridiculous spat between the two communities.