GNU Hands Out Trisquel At a Microsoft Store 274
alexanderb writes "Remember GNU's Windows 8 launch trick or treat in October, where Free Software Foundation activists handed out gratis copies of the free (as in freedom) system Trisquel GNU/Linux? Well, GNU returned for a Microsoft store's 'Tech for Tots' session on December 20th in Boston, MA. Like in October, the activists (accompanied by a gnu) handed out gratis copies of Trisquel GNU/Linux — a free alternative to Microsoft's new operating system, Windows 8."
Gnews: Gnus bearing gifts! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
if it weren't for Mr. Torvald's kernel, the GNU project would be still spinning its wheels.
Creating a kernel is easy. How long did it take Linus? Certainly not DECADES. Were it not for GNU, Linus's kernel wouldn't have done ANYTHING, and we'd STILL be waiting for him to get a decent compiler and userland tool suit running. Think about it. "I'm going to install the Linux Kernel!" "Why, it just sits there not doing a damned thing, doesn't even have a file system." Seriously. People make Monolithic Kernels all the damn time [osdev.org], it's not even hard. I wrote such a kernel and boot loader in x86 ASM in about two weeks worth of evenings for my toy OS. Linus' was just the first one to come along, and that's good enough for FLOSS. It sucks that GNU gets dropped from the name given how much MORE work was put into it than the dead simple kernel Linus wrote, and it really sucks that he didn't use the "at your option any future version" text in the license, -- I mean, he made it impossible to change the license why? It's not like commercial folks couldn't stay with GPL2 "at their option". I don't know man, you sound like you're putting Linus on a much higher pedestal than you need to. Great guy and all, but come on, what he did was and still is a TINY fraction of the work.
Re:Ignoring the problem. (Score:2, Interesting)
All other things being equal I suppose I'd prefer Micosoft Office to LibreOffice. But when price and freedom are considered, I'm happy with LibreOffice.
Trisquel GNU/Linux is not "free software". (Score:0, Interesting)
They should have been handing out a desktop-oriented BSD distro instead.
Trisquel may avoid proprietary software / firmware (though to a lesser extent than OpenBSD), but it is still marred by support for intellectual property monopolies in the form of restrictive copyleft licensing. In fact, copyleft depends on copyright MUCH MORE than most businesses in the software industry do today, as many transition to explicit contracts like SaaS, hardware bundling, support contracts, etc. GPL is morally identical to SOPA, but with a different set of demagogues seeking to gain power from it.
--libman
Re:Ignoring the problem. (Score:3, Interesting)
Find me a windows system where every driver works without a single forum hunt... You're delusional. I use windows almost exclusively, mostly because I game a lot, and I have problems requiring forum hunting all the time.
Just today I've spent ages trying to get this stupid usb headset driver to work in 7x64. Apparently Rosewill still hasn't made it easy after however many years 7 has been out.
A normal user using Ubuntu or another well crafted distro will have a computer exactly as messed up as their windows computer would be.
Re:Ignoring the problem. (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking of better products, see whether you can read this [fsf.org] until the end without laughing out loud. Personally, I broke at the point where they compared FSF membership card to a $50 iTunes card. I mean, seriously?
Re:Trisquel? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Good luck with that (Score:3, Interesting)