David A. Harding
Thursday, 19 Apr 2007
I'm reading Joe Terranova's blog about the release of Ubuntu Feisty Fawn and about all the things he'll be showing off at the Trenton Computer Festival (TCF). He'll be running Beryl, probably with proprietary drivers, Microsoft Windows in a virtual environment, Microsoft Internet Explorer through a remote desktop viewing application, and he talks about the partially–proprietary Sun Java included in this new release of Ubuntu. Also, he's waiting a few days before burning CDs so people can make sure the proprietary wireless network drivers aren't broken.
I think the only thing he mentions in his blog that has nothing to do with proprietary software is the colour of the default Ubuntu background.
I thought Ubuntu was about something besides running proprietary software. Something about humanity. Something about free software too. If these are the core values of Ubuntu, then why do advocates sell it based on how it does almost all the same things as Microsoft Windows with almost all the same proprietary restrictions?
I'll be at TCF this year, and if the Ubuntu advocates have 15 square inches of spare space on their table, I'd love to setup my laptop running gNewSense with no proprietary software. It won't connect to the wireless network and I don't think it'll run Beryl or Compiz, but it runs fine otherwise.
Updates
20 April 2007 08:25Z:
Joe's response,
Chris Ingram's commentary