System76 vs. The LVFS Firmware Updating Service

[cybertraveler]

cybertraveler I want an open source solution to work and it does with most things. If you hear me crying like a baby just remember the baby that cries get's fed first.Ubuntu's Lansape is foss? I need proof got a link for the code?

Just so I'm clear: the Landscape solution as a whole costs money and the server part of it might be proprietary. The client part is what matters regarding whether Ubuntu is an Open Source system that you are free to modify and improve, or not. The client part of Landscape is Open Source (GPL):

https://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/trusty/landscape-client/trusty/view/head:/LICENSE

That link isn't a complete proof that all the parts of the client are Open Source. I'm 99% sure it is Open Source though. Ubuntu is an Open Source desktop. I've never come across a single piece of pre-installed, proprietary software on an Ubuntu desktop in the 10 years I've been playing around with it. Canonical claim it is an Open Source system: https://www.ubuntu.com/desktop

Ubuntu is an Open Source operating system.

Regarding wanting an Open Source solution that works. Right now AMD is absolutely the best performance graphics hardware with Open Source drivers. The drivers aren't perfect. The drivers will continue to improve over time though. This is my experience of Open Source. In general everything gets gradually better over time and support is long lasting.

AMD users can reasonably expect their hardware to continue to get better support on GNU/Linux for even as much as a decade into the future.

NVIDIA users should only reasonably expect that their hardware will work the way it does right now on the operating system they're using right now for the tasks they're doing... right now. They cannot reasonably assume that 5 years from now they'll be able to run their hardware on the latest Linux, XOrg and Wayland stacks. They cannot reasonably assume that any game-braking bugs that are found will be ever fixed. This is how it is with proprietary drivers: when the graphics card mfg no longer cares about the hardware because they are not profiting from it, support will diminish. It's worse actually: even while they are making a profit right now, the support can be terrible if you are trying to do something which the vast majority of their customers are not.

I have zero sympathy for anyone who has any issues with NVIDIA drivers on GNU/Linux when they had already been exposed to people like me telling them what problems they will have. AMD users don't need sympathy when they get issues: they just need patches... and those patches will come.

[starshipeleven]

Are there a difference? Both companies want to control a market and impose their politics. They are called corporations.

RedHat isn't imposing shit, a blog post from the lead developer isn't "imposing" anything to anyone.

Oracle on the other hand...

[starshipeleven]

cybertraveler I want an open source solution to work and it does with most things. If you hear me crying like a baby just remember the baby that cries get's fed first.Ubuntu's Lansape is foss? I need proof got a link for the code?

It does not work like that in the actual world. You either pay for it or it does not happen (either proprietary or FOSS), none cares about whining. Find a project that works towards your goal or make one, that's how FOSS works.

[starshipeleven]

I hate Gnome but their stupid decissions and stubborness. I also hate KDE too. Both should collaborate and share more code, instead NIH crap too.

They already do, where it matters. But you can't ask to merge to very different projects with different goals.

[starshipeleven]

cybertraveler - Well, unfortunately AMD's GPU drivers are just not as good enough as Intel's and NVIDUA's drivers. There are still few annoying bugs ehre and there, with random GPU hangs, display problems etc. In contrast I've never faced problems with Intel GPU drivers. They're solid and just work.

Never used Haswell and later I guess?

[starshipeleven]

I find that aspect of System76 very strange. They seem to heavily favour nvidia over AMD. I'd expect that any company focused on producing hardware for an operating system with a prominent FOSS culture, would be heavily bias towards AMD.

I can't be the only FOSS user that would never buy a pre-made system with an nvidia graphics card dependent on the proprietary nvidia driver. I wouldn't even consider it. I'm often encouraging friends to get a GNU/Linux system and I go out of my way to make sure they get AMD or Intel graphics, not nvidia.

That's because they are rebranding Clevo laptops (like most other companies and OEMs that need relatively short production runs of laptops), and Clevo does not use AMD stuff because they use what is most common.

[starshipeleven]

Reading both blogs I think there are on both sides valid arguments. Whats important at the end of the day is that first the firmware gets updated automatically and secondly that the firmware is becoming step by step open source. It seems like System76 focuses on the second point and there I think that Red Hat should be more supportive.

Those are only empty promises, besides the fact that System76 isn't doing shit about it (to the contrary of Purism), the blobs will remain blobs because the company selling the hardware will threat to sue everyone that touches them. We already saw with Purism how Intel was ready to shut down any effort to reverse-engineer (to opensource) their blobs.

[starshipeleven]

Lol, lots of Red Hat evangelists here. But it its okay, they really helps the advance of the Linux ecosystem, I admit that.

But God forbid if you do not support their solutions for everything, or you will be lynched on the public square...

System76's update software relies on vendor blobs (executables from AMI, which is the UEFI provider) and due to that is vendor-specific.

Of course System76 probably has no other choice since they don't actually make their own systems, but this does not mean that calling them out for this makes you a RedHat evangelist.

[PackRat]

cybertraveler I want an open source solution to work and it does with most things. If you hear me crying like a baby just remember the baby that cries get's fed first.Ubuntu's Lansape is foss? I need proof got a link for the code?

[timofonic]

Don't do business with RedHat Oracle.

Fixed that for you.

Are there a difference? Both companies want to control a market and impose their politics. They are called corporations.