System76 vs. The LVFS Firmware Updating Service

[PackRat]

Man oh man I don't even know where to start... All I want to do is art. Defenestration? I can kick it up a notch with me as a Luddite smashing my computers and drawing with pencil in a park on a nice day. I am so disappointed with the way tech is going.

Data collection supposedly about the 'collective consciousness' of what software is used by the 'masses' on the needs of the majority are. In the end it's about money.
With proprietary software people buy according to their needs. With foss popularity contest it is data collection based on tools that people use, that as an alternative to proprietary software?

All the cloud is running software on other people's computers. This is essentially no different then proprietary software is it not? Here is a code of conduct or a license agreement.If you don't like it do not use our product or services. Our way or the high way...

System76 what does this name mean? It's named after the 1776 the American revolution. System76 first came on my radar when Pixar open sourced the USD or universal scene description software. I saw it used with rhel or fedora.

I seriously don't know what Linux disto to use and for what. System76 endorses Canonical and Ubuntu that has less support within the digital art community. Allegorithmic's substance painter for example on their site's system requirements is for rhel/centos 7 and they only support Ubuntu on the steam indie version.

I personally believe people should pay for what they want. Why do you have to data collect? You could simply ask and I pay for it with at time of purchase.

Linux is not mainstream give it up. Microsoft has surface studio and dell canvas both run the software I want to use, Ubuntu can not run Autodesk Maya and Mudbox (runs on centos/rhel), pixologic zbrush win and mac only.

I would like to see Linux more competitive in the workstation market a lot of tools are already here.

I can draw with pencil and sculpt in clay and skip all this bullshit these are just tools...

[cybertraveler]

I still have my doubts about System76 as they focus on providing closed firmware and driver blobs of Nvidia and I cannot understand their objectives here.

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.

[PackRat]

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.

Foss? System76 with ubuntu or red hat ? Is Ununtu's landscape foss? Like bro I feel you, but don't be a fool foss and non-foss as it is today is marketing. The foss community needs to change their mantra. As much as I like the ideals of foss especially with drivers people do need a working solution. Cybertraveler, Amd is not providing solutions others are.. I have been waiting and waiting bro how long must I wait?

[cybertraveler]

Foss? System76 with ubuntu or red hat ? Is Ununtu's landscape foss? Like bro I feel you, but don't be a fool foss and non-foss as it is today is marketing. The foss community needs to change their mantra. As much as I like the ideals of foss especially with drivers people do need a working solution. Cybertraveler, Amd is not providing solutions others are.. I have been waiting and waiting bro how long must I wait?

There is nothing marketing about it. Right now, today, you can run a fully Open Source software system today with Ubuntu and a modern AMD graphics card. It's the standard out of box experience of Ubuntu. The landscape tools that come pre-installed on your system are Open Source. The only non-open parts of your system will be the the proprietary firmware.

If I buy a modern NVIDIA card, my system wont be fully Open Source.

[Guest]

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.

[timofonic]

Ummm.... it's System76 displaying NIH with their own proprietary solution... Let me guess, you hate systemd and Gnome too?

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.

[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.

[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?

[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.

[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.