Great interview 4 Gamix, but where's the freespire info Pat?

John Mills · Post by **John Mills** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:35 am

Hey guys,

another good show, the Gamix info was really interesting to hear! I think that Eli is really on to a great idea there. In my opinion he should get in touch with Michael Robertson, he could really be in to something there that idea. An open source gaming platform is long overdue, but you have to remember that hardware loose a lot of money on consoles in the hope of recouping it on software sales. But I can't think of any reason why we couldn't just drop that disk in a PC and boot it.

I was listening to an interview with Jon Watson and Michael Robertson and this sounded right up his street. So if your reading ELI give him a call or send an e-mail or even contact the Linspire people.

Anyway I sound a fanboy here but I think you should really make time on the show and talk about this freespire issue. I really think this is a possitive step forward for Linux on the desktop. It was also interesting to hear what you guys were saying about using open source and proprietry software. I tend to agree with Pat and Linc that if it's the best software for the job then it should be useable if you want. Also I agree that proprietry drivers should be permissable too to function with the Kernal. I personally use the Nvidia drivers and I would not switch to the open source ones.

Ok

Take it easy

John Mills

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Thu May 04, 2006 9:42 am

zzzzzzzzzzzz. zzzzzzzzzzzz. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Oh sorry I just woke up. Is that interview over yet?

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Thu May 04, 2006 11:25 am

"Do you only use non proprietry software on your home systems?"

No, but I try to minimize my use of proprietary stuff as much as possible, for examlpe, as soon a Gnash is stable and works well, I'm gonna feed my dog that stinking Macromedia plugin, and similar.

I'm not 100% Stallman-like in this field, because I can make compromises in a few areas, but in terms of where I stand between the philosphies of the Free Software movement, and the Open Source movement, I stand between them, although one step closer to the FSM, because I believe there's something more important than practical benefits and also a lot more things is more important to me than making money, for example I understand that LSB is important and all, but all it's made to do is make it eaisier for people to make proprietary software for Linux, and I don't really know how I feel about that.

The proprietary stuff I do use is minimal though:
NVIDIA driver
The "w32codecs" package
Macromedia Flash player

And that's about it, the reason I use NVIDIA's proprietary driver, is because there is no modern video card that I can get that has Free drivers, both NVIDIA and ATi are proprietary and the Radeon 9200 is like a mammoth these days, and can't do very high resolutions or even maintain a good framerate in Quake 3 at resolutions over 1024x768.

I know Intel makes their graphics drivers available, but their products are not cards, it's integrated graphics, and I hate that idea, and I wanna use AMD, because I feel that I get more for my money and that the motherboards are superior, especially when we talk Opteron vs. Xeon.

Heck, the day LinuxBIOS works rock solidly I'll surely use that, I know that instead of load a 16-bit environment like pretty much every modern BIOS on motherboards today do, it brings up a 32-bit environment and can hand stuff over to the OS in like 3 seconds, wouldn't that be awesome?

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Thu May 04, 2006 10:56 pm

It seems sort of easy to make the one exception for video card drivers. I'm curious. What if every piece of hardware for your machine came with binary drivers that were better than the OS alternative? Would it be so easy then?

What if every prominent application had a closed source native app that was better than the OS alternative? It seems a very slippery slope to say it's ok because you only use a few.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Thu May 04, 2006 11:09 pm

hellonorman wrote:It seems sort of easy to make the one exception for video card drivers. I'm curious. What if every piece of hardware for your machine came with binary drivers that were better than the OS alternative? Would it be so easy then?

Well, I'd just buy some other hardware that did have good Free Software drivers, because picturing a scenario where there wasn't any, is just so unrealistic that it's not even interesting.

hellonorman wrote:What if every prominent application had a closed source native app that was better than the OS alternative? It seems a very slippery slope to say it's ok because you only use a few.

Well, if I really really really wanted to run ONLY Free Software on my system, I absolutely could, for LaGER, me, Dann, CptnObvious999, xafan and pekuja use Skype, because it works the best and is the most bandwidth efficient solution. However whenever Jingle becomes stable either Gaim or Kopete, I'll likely throw a strong push for us to use it.

Also, I don't consider GPLed software, that is made illegal by patents, non-Free software, apperantly some people do that, and that I think is a bullshit statement, mad is absolutely Free Software, but there are a bunch of retards (Yes! Fraunhofer and Thomson, I AM talking about you!) that insists on restricting use of good Free Software. Kinda like when people accuse "Qt - Open Source Edition" to be non-Free, what kind of ignorant shit is that, the thing is under GPL for crying out loud!!!

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Fri May 05, 2006 12:40 am

Tsuroerusu wrote:
hellonorman wrote:It seems sort of easy to make the one exception for video card drivers. I'm curious. What if every piece of hardware for your machine came with binary drivers that were better than the OS alternative? Would it be so easy then?
Well, I'd just buy some other hardware that did have good Free Software drivers, because picturing a scenario where there wasn't any, is just so unrealistic that it's not even interesting.

You are avoiding the question here.

hellonorman wrote:What if every prominent application had a closed source native app that was better than the OS alternative? It seems a very slippery slope to say it's ok because you only use a few.
Well, if I really really really wanted to run ONLY Free Software on my system, I absolutely could, for LaGER, me, Dann, CptnObvious999, xafan and pekuja use Skype, because it works the best and is the most bandwidth efficient solution. However whenever Jingle becomes stable either Gaim or Kopete, I'll likely throw a strong push for us to use it.

Well of course you COULD. Just as you COULD use only free drivers with your nvidia card. But your logic seems to be that you only use a few non OSS things and it enhances your system so it's ok. If it's ok for a few things why not for everything?

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri May 05, 2006 5:23 am

hellonorman wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:
hellonorman wrote:It seems sort of easy to make the one exception for video card drivers. I'm curious. What if every piece of hardware for your machine came with binary drivers that were better than the OS alternative? Would it be so easy then?
Well, I'd just buy some other hardware that did have good Free Software drivers, because picturing a scenario where there wasn't any, is just so unrealistic that it's not even interesting.
You are avoiding the question here.

I actually think I'd go with the Free Software drivers that might be lacking in functionality but being Free, I'm not sure I would have had the same opinion 1½ years ago, but I guess times and yourself change.

hellonorman wrote:
hellonorman wrote:What if every prominent application had a closed source native app that was better than the OS alternative? It seems a very slippery slope to say it's ok because you only use a few.
Well, if I really really really wanted to run ONLY Free Software on my system, I absolutely could, for LaGER, me, Dann, CptnObvious999, xafan and pekuja use Skype, because it works the best and is the most bandwidth efficient solution. However whenever Jingle becomes stable either Gaim or Kopete, I'll likely throw a strong push for us to use it.

Well of course you COULD. Just as you COULD use only free drivers with your nvidia card. But your logic seems to be that you only use a few non OSS things and it enhances your system so it's ok. If it's ok for a few things why not for everything?[/quote]
OK, here's the thing. I really want to run an all Free system, but I bought my Geforce4 Ti-4200 three years ago, a whole year before I switched to Linux, and I just don't have the money to buy another video card right now, and I don't like the idea of buying some old-ass hardware that is already mega obsolete that's just a waste of my money.

I don't like using non-Free drivers for networking devices, because with all this NSA surveilance stuff and generally stuff like that, I wanna make sure there ain't a government backdoor in my drivers, not that I am thinking that there is right now, but with the way the US government has been actng towards consumers' rights in the digital world I could foresee a day when networking drivers in Windows Vista actually did contain some sort of backdoor.
Also, for my server, it's ALL Free Software, no proprietary stuff comes to my servers!

What I am personally waiting for right now is Intel's new microprocessor architecture in the form of the Workstation/Server chips codenamed Woodcrest, but I also wanna see Conroe and Memron, which, respectivly, are desktop and laptop chips. Maybe they will do some new stuff on these to make the onboard graphics idea be less crappy, and since DDRII memory will probably be used, I could throw a HUGE amount of memory into a such system and be happy.
That is what I am waiting to see right now.

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Fri May 05, 2006 5:59 am

Tsuroerusu wrote: I actually think I'd go with the Free Software drivers that might be lacking in functionality but being Free, I'm not sure I would have had the same opinion 1½ years ago, but I guess times and yourself change.

OK, here's the thing. I really want to run an all Free system, but I bought my Geforce4 Ti-4200 three years ago, a whole year before I switched to Linux, and I just don't have the money to buy another video card right now, and I don't like the idea of buying some old-ass hardware that is already mega obsolete that's just a waste of my money.

It's a question of logic. It's either ok to use closed source or it is not. Your position hinges on the fact that right now you only choose a minimal set of closed source code. You say you would choose only open source but when it becomes inconvenient suddenly it's ok for you to choose closed source. From that slippery slope you are really in no position to advocate free as in freedom.

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri May 05, 2006 7:35 am

hellonorman wrote:It's a question of logic. It's either ok to use closed source or it is not. Your position hinges on the fact that right now you only choose a minimal set of closed source code. You say you would choose only open source but when it becomes inconvenient suddenly it's ok for you to choose closed source.

It's not a matter of inconvienience, it's a matter of my economics, I don't work right now, and I am in a little bit of nutsack situation with school-stuff, so I can't afford money to buy a new card.

I have gradually been outphasing closed source code, I started two years ago by dumping Windows, and I have continued on since then and as I have gain more knowledge of Linux and even BSD for that matter, I have learned how to best use the good solutions there are out there, for example, I have a Mac mini running Fedora Core 5, and that has a great Free Java stack, so I dumped the Java platform from Sun, and that was a big big step for me, because I am hooked on Azureus.

When it comes to Skype, that is also a matter of economics, not inconvienience, for starters, I have a crappy internet connection, and when I try and use Asterisk or similar stuff, it lags and doesn't sound good and is pretty much unusable because of my bandwidth and that is pricy enough as it is, even though my parents pay for it, we really can't afford a bigger upload pipe.

I went from using pretty much all proprietary software, into being very close to being all Free Software in less than two years, and included in that time is the time to learn how to use bash, KDE and all the day to day apps.

hellonorman wrote:From that slippery slope you are really in no position to advocate free as in freedom.

I find that statement quite offending, so I would rather not comment on it.

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Fri May 05, 2006 7:52 am

Tsuroerusu wrote: It's not a matter of inconvienience, it's a matter of my economics, I don't work right now, and I am in a little bit of nutsack situation with school-stuff, so I can't afford money to buy a new card.

Either you don't understand the point or refuse to. First of all you said it was over two years ago you bought this card so your at the moment financial situation is irrelevant. The point is that you choose to use the closed source driver. What if printers, sound cards, bridge chipsets, capture cards, etc etc etc all started to come with closed source drivers? What if all those drivers outperform the open source drivers to the degree that the video card drivers do? Would it still be so easy to rationalize using them if it wasn't just the one or two it is now?

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Fri May 05, 2006 8:07 am

I probably would. At least on my desktop.

To use the tired, and very inappropriate car analogy:

Imagine (since the premise of the current direction of this tread involves a lot of time spent in fantasyland anyhow) if you had the choice between two cars:

One is free as both freedom and beer (though where the hell people find all this free beer is beyond me), but it shakes like hell on the freeway at speeds over 45 mph, the stereo doesn't work well, and you can only see through about a square foot of the windshield. You can however, freely open up the hood, see how it runs, and "improve it" if you want to - in fact, you can improve all aspects of it if you want to, only there aren't any instructions anywhere at all on how to do so because the company that made all of the hardware for this car isn't telling.

The second car, is free as in beer, but not as in freedom fries. It is fast as hell, it corners like a demon chasing tail, and has a slammin' stereo. In fact, everything about it *appears* to be great, and very few people have ever reported having problems with it that couldn't be solved by waiting a week or two for an upgrade part. You are not, however, allowed to open the hood and poke around. It is feasible that this car is the antichrist's own ride, you have no way of knowing, but then the only people saying so are a small contingent of left-wing nut jobs with big beards and smelly pits, or "higher standards."

Which do you choose, considering you are already a member of the absolute lunatic fringe, but you aren't political or religious about it?

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Fri May 05, 2006 8:10 am

hellonorman wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote: It's not a matter of inconvienience, it's a matter of my economics, I don't work right now, and I am in a little bit of nutsack situation with school-stuff, so I can't afford money to buy a new card.
Either you don't understand the point or refuse to. First of all you said it was over two years ago you bought this card so your at the moment financial situation is irrelevant. The point is that you choose to use the closed source driver. What if printers, sound cards, bridge chipsets, capture cards, etc etc etc all started to come with closed source drivers? What if all those drivers outperform the open source drivers to the degree that the video card drivers do? Would it still be so easy to rationalize using them if it wasn't just the one or two it is now?

I meant to say my current economic situation doesn't give me the option to change graphics cards.

The scenario you are picturing are largely irrelevant, because we do have Free drivers for a lot of hardware, and if the computers of the future plan to lock shit down, I will just keep using what is available in a Free solution, for example I looked at what options were available for motherboards, VIA has GPLed drivers for GNU/Linux, and they were released a long time ago and has made it into the mainline kernel, and works great, so even when I need upgrade my current hardware, I can get an AMD64 chip and a VIA motherboard and it would work with something like Ututo which is an FSF-blessed GNU/Linux distro.

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Fri May 05, 2006 8:27 am

Tsuroerusu wrote:
hellonorman wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote: It's not a matter of inconvienience, it's a matter of my economics, I don't work right now, and I am in a little bit of nutsack situation with school-stuff, so I can't afford money to buy a new card.
Either you don't understand the point or refuse to. First of all you said it was over two years ago you bought this card so your at the moment financial situation is irrelevant. The point is that you choose to use the closed source driver. What if printers, sound cards, bridge chipsets, capture cards, etc etc etc all started to come with closed source drivers? What if all those drivers outperform the open source drivers to the degree that the video card drivers do? Would it still be so easy to rationalize using them if it wasn't just the one or two it is now?
I meant to say my current economic situation doesn't give me the option to change graphics cards.

The scenario you are picturing are largely irrelevant, because we do have Free drivers for a lot of hardware, and if the computers of the future plan to lock shat down, I will just keep using what is available in a Free solution, for example I looked at what options were available for motherboards, VIA has GPLed drivers for GNU/Linux, and they were released a long time ago and has made it into the mainline kernel, and works great, so even when I need upgrade my current hardware, I can get an AMD64 chip and a VIA motherboard and it would work with something like Ututo which is an FSF-blessed GNU/Linux distro.

How old are you? Do you understand abstract thought and philosophical debate?

hellonorman · Post by **hellonorman** » Fri May 05, 2006 8:45 am

Snarkout wrote:I probably would. At least on my desktop.

To use the tired, and very inappropriate car analogy:

Imagine (since the premise of the current direction of this tread involves a lot of time spent in fantasyland anyhow) if you had the choice between two cars:

One is free as both freedom and beer (though where the hell people find all this free beer is beyond me), but it shakes like hell on the freeway at speeds over 45 mph, the stereo doesn't work well, and you can only see through about a square foot of the windshield. You can however, freely open up the hood, see how it runs, and "improve it" if you want to - in fact, you can improve all aspects of it if you want to, only there aren't any instructions anywhere at all on how to do so because the company that made all of the hardware for this car isn't telling.

The second car, is free as in beer, but not as in freedom fries. It is fast as hell, it corners like a demon chasing tail, and has a slammin' stereo. In fact, everything about it *appears* to be great, and very few people have ever reported having problems with it that couldn't be solved by waiting a week or two for an upgrade part. You are not, however, allowed to open the hood and poke around. It is feasible that this car is the antichrist's own ride, you have no way of knowing, but then the only people saying so are a small contingent of left-wing nut jobs with big beards and smelly pits, or "higher standards."

Which do you choose, considering you are already a member of the absolute lunatic fringe, but you aren't political or religious about it?

If you are refering to me...I have no problem with your choice. But if you go around advocating free as in freedom and still make that choice than I would find you a hypocrite. Especially if you rationalized it by saying that it's ok because you only made that choice about the car and not your boat, tractor, motorcycle and lawn mower.

Gomer_X · Post by **Gomer_X** » Fri May 05, 2006 8:55 am

hellonorman wrote: How old are you? Do you understand abstract thought and philosophical debate?

Do you have any manners? We're all friends here. We have spirited debates here, but we don't insult each other. Coming in here and being an ass isn't going to win you any points.

Personally I think you're wrong.

hellonorman wrote: It's a question of logic. It's either ok to use closed source or it is not. Your position hinges on the fact that right now you only choose a minimal set of closed source code.

Explain to me why it's only possible to have 1 of 2 positions. People have their own personal ideas as to how much inconvenience theyre willing to bear in order to support an ideology. Mine may be different than yours, but it doesn't make it any less valid. I choose to run as much open source software as possible, but on one system I use closed video card drivers. To me it's worth it.