FSF-Approved gNewSense 2.0 Released

An anonymous reader writes "gNewSense DeltaH (2.0), a second major release of a GNU/Linux distribution with focus on freedom, has just been released. It is based on Ubuntu 8.04 which was released less than week ago. gNewSense is one of the few GNU/Linux distributions listed as free by the GNU Project."

And why do we need another Distro?

From http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/Features [gnewsense.org]

emacs, bsdgames, nethack and build-essential part of the default install

And now we know...

Re:And why do we need another Distro?

It's much more than that. You'd be surprised at how careful they are not to ship with a single bit that is not Free Software.

It may seem ludicrous to some at first, but think about the benefit. Even if you wont use it as your main system you can use it to test just how much of your hardware is 100% Free Software compliant, or you can use it to see what hardware you should buy that is 100% compliant.

And Free Software compliant hardware equals best possible experience - since it will all then work out of the box, with bugs fixed and improvements steadily coming, because you don't need to depend on some third party for everything.

gNewSense plays a crucial role.

You can read a bit more about that here http://www.nuxified.org/blog/gnewsense_2_0_a_premier_freedomware_platform_based_on_ubuntu_8_04_lts_released [nuxified.org]

Cheers

Re:And why do we need another Distro?

You are right, but there is one point that I don't think you considered: paying someone to fix a bug or add a feature.

If you have 20 PCs in your office and they all have "free" drivers for their video cards, then you can always pay someone to fix any bugs that come up - and it might even be worth the money depending on how many computers you have with the same card.

Good luck trying to pay nvidia to fix their driver.

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Do you even *know* the details on the Firefox/Iceweasel decision? What is your suggestion to the issue then?

The path of "ideology" is what allows people to have something that works and bitch about lack of "pragmatism". If not by those silly people foll

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Doing stupid things like renaming Firefox to IceWeezel to because of silly trademark issues, is just dumb

I thought they did this because the Mozilla people said they had to if they wanted to include patches that hadn't been approved thru Mozilla? But then I didn't follow this that closely, so maybe I misunderstood something...

No you followed it just fine, that's exactly why they did it Being able to patch software independent of the original developer is a core component of Free Software and Debian GNU/Linux is a great example of Free Software.

Personally I do enjoy the freedom

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And it's named "gNuisance?" Are they trying to give The GIMP a run for its 'poorly-named software product' money?

I guess I need to RTFA

But what's the point?

Debian is properly free, in the sense the gNewSense is. Ubuntu is based on debian, gobuntu is ubuntu's free version, why does gNewsense need to exist?

Or does it address some other need, and freedom is just a side-effect?

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This [ubuntu.com] explains it pretty well. In short, gNewSense was first, Gobuntu is official, and they haven't had the time or motivation to merge yet.

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So with debian, the fact that I have to go to etc, edit apt.sources and add the non-free repositories (something which I would have to consciously and knowingly do), isn't enough for them?

OK, I think the FSF just lost a little bit of respect here.

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I suspect it's more because even though they aren't made available by default, Debian actually maintains non-free repositories. And let's face it, adding the debian.org non-free depositories is one of the first things anybody with a Debian system does whi

hmm

Of course, "free" here no longer means you can distribute it however you want to, if it's part of a system then it imposes certain rules on that system nowadays...

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They're talking about the freedom to use your computer however you like, not the freedom to distribute other people's work however you like.

Now immortalised in song

RMS came onto the OpenBSD-misc mailing list in January to inform the subscribers that he had deemed OBSD to be non-free. Much wonderment ensued.

It transpired that the ports collection contained some non-free software. If one pkg_adds such software on

Re:

Wow, did you read the same thread I did?

RMS popped in to say in essence that he will not recommend users use OpenBSD (based on the presence of non-free software in their ports collection). Then he got flamed by a bunch of people claiming all sorts of thin

naming

The first thing that came to my mind, and another AC at -1 noted it, is that "gNewSense" must be pronounced "gee, nuisance" or just "nuisance." I can't decide if GIMP or Nuisance wins the prize for most useless name. I'm not saying go through a formal focus group process, but if it's a project worth spending a little time on, isn't it worth a name that doesn't have unsavory connotations? Just ask four friends (vocally) whether a name just sounds vaguely nonsensical or might be misunderstood as something else.

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The did it already. Not surprisingly they gave up on writing a totally new kernel and used emacs instead.

http://humorix.org/articles/2006/06/hurd/ [humorix.org]

Re:

Simple answer: NO.

The Hurd team are the ultimate tinkerers. Whenever it looks like its getting anywhere near complete (as in pre-alpha) they decide to switch the microkernal system, reinvent the shared memory architecture or something.

Re:

theres actually a team? i thought it was a myth.

Re:

theres actually a team? i thought it was a myth.

Not a team. A hurd.

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I'm wondering if they named it gNewSense because it's a gNuisance to not have non-free software?

Re:Unless you pay for the media, you're not suppor

it's a combination of linux and Free software zealotry as i understand, they remove binary blob drivers from the kernel, as well as only support free software for the distro. probably hardcore programmers for a living, its hard to imagine anyone else not

Re:

Debian is not strictly free as in freedom, at least not to the point to be recommended by the fsf. The main reason is, it's still too easy to install non-free stuff through debian repos.

Debian isn't free because it leaves you free to go non-free?

Re:

With gNewSense there are no such non-free repos.

I wonder what happens if you sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list

Re:

It starts emacs and removes you from the admin group?

Re:

But this uses emacs!