Comments on: Free Ubuntu

By: as days pass by » Blog Archive » Ubuntu 7.10 to be properly Free (if you want)

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 09:03:06 +0000

[...] Those of you who are thinking “who the fuck cares?”, read my previous request for this to happen and particularly Freedom vs Features to find out why I care. You should also read Jono Bacon’s Features vs Freedom; if you fall on his side of the fence rather than mine, that’s fine, because in October we’ll both be able to be Ubuntu users without a problem. We can both be part of the conversation. [...]

By: Paulo

Paulo — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 02:19:15 +0000

I also share your concerns. I have been using debian for two years, ubuntu for eight months and I have recently installed gnewsense in a spare partition (so I have a tri-boot GNU/Linux box). What bothers me most is not that ubuntu (and to a lesser extent, debian) ship non-free components, but that I, the user, am not able to know exactly what is free and what is not and so can not easily choose not to install non-free drivers or firmware. On the other hand, there are (still) non-free sofware that I am willing to install (java, for instance). I would just like to have complete information and freedom of choice.

By: sil

sil — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 10:03:28 +0000

Mark: yes, indeed. At the moment I’m trying to put together a list of everything that I’ve got so I can build a script to remove it, but the virtual packages thing is a problem; Edgy seems to be set up so that it’s basically not possible to simultaneously (a) remove all the non-free stuff and (b) have upgrades work properly. I’m going to talk to the Ubuntu kernel team about that particular issue.

Additionally, the base kernel package (not the restricted modules package) also contains non-free firmware — the Debian atmel-firmware package, for example, is in the kernel package in Ubuntu, so removing it means rebuilding the kernel package without it. Making one script to do all the work is turning out to be difficult, but it shouldn’t be impossible.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 24 Dec 2006 03:48:55 +0000

Stuart, here are my experiences, as an Ubuntu Edgy user who shares your concerns.

vrms is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn’t catch popular non-free packages like flashplugin-nonfree. On a fresh Ubuntu install, it flags 4 kernel packages:

1. linux-generic (false positive, this is a virtual package)
2. linux-restricted-modules-generic (false positive, this is a virtual package)
3. linux-restricted-modules-common (false positive, these are just helper scripts)
4. linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-generic (actual non-Free software is here — madwifi, ATI/nVidia drivers, etc.)

You can “sudo aptitude remove” all of these at once if you don’t need the non-Free drivers. The downside is that you’re removing important virtual packages that Ubuntu uses to manage upgrades smoothly, so you may want to reinstall the virtual packages before doing a major version upgrade.

Multiverse has lots of useful Free Software which has patent problems (like mplayer, faac, faad, and other video-related stuff), and, as has been noted, some non-Free software. Even if you remove multiverse from your sources.list, it will not remove multiverse packages that you previously installed. You can type “aptitude search ~i~smultiverse” (spacing matters) to see what multiverse packages you currently have installed, then investigate them individually to determine why they were dumped into the multiverse ghetto in the first place.

On the down side, the more general situation about Ubuntu’s commitment (or lack thereof) is going to get worse before it gets better. Feisty will ship with more binary blobs than ever — never mind the drivers, they’re even going to ship a non-Free version of Firefox! I may just jump ship at that point. To what, I have no idea.

By: sil

sil — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 23:59:11 +0000

Ross: then that’s your approach, and I’m not going to stop you. My counter-argument to that would be: why would I ever want to switch to Windows from Ubuntu if it meant that I had to start paying for upgrades, that I had to hunt down drivers for my stuff over the internet, and I had no way of talking to the people who can actually fix any problems I have without paying ninety-five dollars for a support call? Ubuntu has some advantages, Windows has others. I ought to note that Ubuntu is likely to support all of your network cards, graphics, and odd USB dongles; I’m talking here about me personally moving *away* from Ubuntu for what I consider to be ethical reasons. I’m not suggesting that anyone else does the same; people should stick with Ubuntu.

By: Ross Parker

Ross Parker — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:04:53 +0000

A very programmer-orientated debate. As a user: why on earth would I want to switch to Ubuntu from Windows if I had to give up my network card, graphics and odd USB dongles? I buy a computer so that I can use it to do stuff, not as a political statement. I want cheap stuff that works.

By: as days pass by » Blog Archive » Freedom vs. Features

as days pass by » Blog Archive » Freedom vs. Features — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 15:56:50 +0000

[...] as days pass by scratched tallies on the prison wall « Free Ubuntu [...]

By: sil

sil — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 11:22:56 +0000

Chris Jones: there’s no firmware at all in the linux-image package? None? The thing that concerns me is that there may not be any non-free things in there _by Ubuntu’s definition_, but they don’t seem to mind non-free firmware blobs. That’s fine, and it’s their decision, but I think I take a slightly different view, and I’d like to know how to contort the thing to match my view :-)

By: Chris Jones

Chris Jones — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 03:39:29 +0000

Removing the restricted and multiverse apt sources will, as has been mentioned elsewhere in the comments with some measure of doubt, absolutely leave you with a fully Free Ubuntu (although you might question the Firefox logo I suppose).

By: sil

sil — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:40:36 +0000

dwc: a little while back, I considered that Ubuntu *was* free. However, I didn’t know much about firmware and binary blobs at that point, and so that didn’t enter into consideration. It now does. That, combined with the other things that I mentioned, have led me to believe that Ubuntu might not be *quite* free enough for me. So I’m trying to move.

I’m sure some “capable developers” might be able to help the gNewSense team, but when I offered there was a pretty chilly reception. I’d like to help people move to gNewSense without blowing away everything and reinstalling, but that’s not one of the team’s goals. I’d like to (as mentioned above) help people install Ubuntu and then remove the debatably non-free bits like firmware, and that’s why I’ve asked for some pointers as to how to work out precisely what those non-free bits are. I’m open to suggestions: what else do you think I should be doing at this point to find out? If you have other ideas about where I should look to get a canonical (!) list of all the debatably non-free stuff in an Ubuntu install, so that I can build something to remove it all, I’d love to hear it. Speak up; it’s harder to help than to carp and criticise, but I’m sure you’re up to the challenge.