[ltp] Re: X30 linux installation

[Phil]

More very useful information, thanks.
Comments in line - and much snipped.

Oisin Feeley wrote:
>
>> The reason I'm tempted to go with Ubuntu is I'm fed up of finding all
>> the bits that are missing from Fedora due to Redhat's licencing policy.
>
> Hmmm.  Specifically what?  One of the features of Fedora 7 is going to
> be a "CodecBuddy" which points out where people can get licensed
> propiretary codecs (from a Spanish company called Fluendo)
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases/FeatureCodecBuddy
>
> Apart from that the Fedora Project's licensing policy is one which
> essentially refuses to ship anything that is not Free software.  From
> a pragmatic point of view this is a very sane approach as it means:
> 1) If something is broken then it can be fixed.  This is in sharp
> distinction to having to wait for some manufacturer to deign to
> release an update to their binary-blob once enough people get
> frustrated and figure out what's making their system freeze.
>
> 2) Red Hat won't be sued by some patent-holder, so we can continue
> benefitting from having a GNU/Linux distro that hires developers to
> keep working on e.g the kernel, wireless drivers
>
> Do what works for you, but realise that non-free binary-blobs/firmware
> for e.g. graphics cards pretty much consigns Linux to being a second
> class citizen which manufacturers will continue to ignore.  Free
> software is pragmatic.
>
I understand the philosophy, and even support it. Unfortunately it makes 
the system hard to use because most users don't know what is freely 
available and what isn't. They just want to be able to play their mp3s, 
view their movie downloads etc. To discover that something that just 
works out of the box on another system (windoze, mac, whatever) requires 
fairly low-level hackery to get to work on Linux is not a pleasant 
learning experience.

The thing that consigns Linux to being a second class citizen is the 
lack of capabilities that people assume all O/Ss have. It has b***er all 
to do with non-free binary-blobs/firmware. While people in the 
open-source world continue to delude themselves that purity is more 
important than functionality they'll continue to produce second-rate 
software.

I loathe Windoze with a passion. It's slow, insecure, plagued with bugs 
and irritates the hell out of me. However I still run it on my laptop, 
despite the fact that pretty much all of the software I use works, or 
has equivalents that work, on Linux. The reason why I've been forced to 
stick with something I really don't like is that despite all its faults, 
it actually works for two key things that are critical for my job:
1) I can print to a printer that's a shared printer on a Windows server. 
I couldn't get FC4, 5 or 6 to do this, not only did the print job just 
hang but it also killed the printer (not great in a multi-user 
environment) whatever drivers, configuration, etc etc I tried
2) I can change the screen resolution with a couple of clicks, I can add 
another screen, flip my desktop onto it, plug in a projector and display 
onto it, pull it out and go back to single-head mode. All without 
logging off, rebooting or restarting the underlying display software. I 
couldn't do that on FC4, 5 or 6 (actually I managed to get it to work 
for about 5 minutes some months ago using the proprietary ATI drivers, 
but only if I rebooted with the second display connected - and then the 
later release of the drivers dropped support for my graphics card).

The rest of the grief I've been through, like having to compile the wifi 
drivers, creating scripts to unload/reload the network interfaces after 
a suspend because the ibm_acpi doesn't do it properly, having a kernel 
upgrade blow everything away, having battery life reduced to minutes 
because the graphics card isn't disabled properly on standby, etc etc. I 
can handle that. But until some people understand that this stuff isn't 
about computing as a hobby but real life use then it isn't going to get 
any better.

There, rant over. I just wish I could use my favourite O/S on my 
favourite laptop.
Mailing lists like these are so useful to helping me get there, but 
frankly they just should not be necessary.

Congratulations to anyone that made it this far ;-)
Cheers
Phil