[Mageia-discuss] Nice review!

Sat Jun 11 09:44:59 CEST 2011

Patricia Fraser a écrit :
+>
+>
+>> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Dick Gevers<dvgevers at xs4all.nl>
+>> wrote:
+>>> On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:51:22 +0200, Patricia Fraser wrote about
+>>> [Mageia-discuss] Nice review!:
+>>>
+>>>> Hi folks,
+>>>>
+>>>> For our reading pleasure (and consideration):
+>>>>
+>>>> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/review/2076258/impressions-mageia-linux
+>>>>
+>>>> Kudos to these guys
+>>>
+>>> And to you!
+>>
+>> The only big problem they mention is the lack of decent video
+>> drivers for both Ati and Nvidia in the DVD. Will Mageia ever have
+>> those in the DVD or will it keep the "free" kind of version that
+>> Mandriva has?
+>>
+>> If it was for me, I would include them but I don't know about the
+>> original reasons of why they are not.
+
+In my mind, misplaced ideology.  The arguments were that non-free drivers should not be on a 
+nominally "free" dvd.  I say nominally because even the kernel contains technically non-free code.
+
+Let's make the focus "working out of the box".
+If that means including non-free drivers where a reliable free driver does not exist, so be it.
+After all, these proprietary drivers are to make the user's proprietary hardware work properly.
+And if a reliable free driver exists, of course we wouldn't include the proprietary driver.
+
+The purists can be accommodated by warnings which would require their confirmation to install any 
+required non-free software.
+The last thing we need is driving potential users away from Mageia (and Linux in general) by an 
+installation that doesn't work properly.
+
+> The T42 they used is quite old, and that model of IBM Thinkpad had
+> a problematic Radeon card - I had loads of trouble with mine under
+> Mandriva, even when using the proprietary drivers.
+
+The review pointed out that after an Internet search which identified the needed driver, they 
+downloaded the proprietary driver, which worked properly.  So it was _not_ a hardware problem.
+Note that this would have been a difficult problem to solve for the average new Linux user.
+
+They summarized :
+"Overall, our opinion is that this first release of Mageia does what the team set out to do. Namely 
+to build a clean and attractive derivative of Mandriva. Now, if the developers will revisit their 
+decision not to distribute proprietary video software drivers on the installation media for those 
+users who need them, we'd say that Mageia seems to have bright future ahead of it."
+
+So let's eliminate this negative.
+
+> I remember seeing loads of discussion about proprietary binary-only
+> stuff on this very list, several times. I think most of it can now be
+> found in the Tainted repos (that's where I found the codecs I
+> needed). It's a legal issue - there are potential Mageia users in
+> every country, and differences between licensing issues are very real.
+
+This is not related to patent or legal issues, as can be found with codecs.
+These drivers are freely redistributable but the manufacturers don't provide the source code, so 
+they are in the non-free repositories.
+
+my 2 cents :)
+-- 
+André
+