The race for compatibilty becomes evil
08 06 2008
Most major Linux distribution vendors are trying to push the Linux desktop harder than ever, in my opinion this is mainly due to the new hugely popular subnotebook craze (such as the EeePC). There is however one major problem to this and that is most open source alternatives to proprietary solutions are not release read yet.
For example, anyone who has wanted to go out and by a wifi dongle for their Linux desktop has had to proceed with caution...or use ndiswrapper with the Windows driver. If you want flash there are 2 open source solutions, both good but neither support everything.
So vendors have had 2 choices, try and assist development of these open solutions and push a distro that does x, y and z but not a, b and c. Or do deals with the devil.
Fedora appears to have gone one way (only open source), openSUSE the complete opposite (evil deals with MS) and Ubuntu appears to be somewhere in the middle (including some proprietary drivers and codecs).
My worry is the massive explosion of proprietary additions into a Linux distro to get competitive edge over other vendors could cause the original end goal for Linux to be lost complete.
The question is this: When does proprietary additions into a Linux distro become evil?
Comments :
2 Comments »
For example, anyone who has wanted to go out and by a wifi dongle for their Linux desktop has had to proceed with caution...or use ndiswrapper with the Windows driver. If you want flash there are 2 open source solutions, both good but neither support everything.
So vendors have had 2 choices, try and assist development of these open solutions and push a distro that does x, y and z but not a, b and c. Or do deals with the devil.
Fedora appears to have gone one way (only open source), openSUSE the complete opposite (evil deals with MS) and Ubuntu appears to be somewhere in the middle (including some proprietary drivers and codecs).
My worry is the massive explosion of proprietary additions into a Linux distro to get competitive edge over other vendors could cause the original end goal for Linux to be lost complete.
The question is this: When does proprietary additions into a Linux distro become evil?
Categories : Linux
Trackbacks : No Trackbacks »
