Re: [gNewSense-users] How to voluntarily follow gNewSense / FSF guidelines on my Ubuntu Apple PPC?

[Benjamin Webb]

2008/8/30 Brian Greer <address@hidden>:
> gNewSense has been instrumental in educating me about free vs open software,
> even though I have been in the game casually since about '95 starting with
> Yggdrasil. :)  Thanks for the education - I thought I knew what free meant,
> but found out I really didn't!
>
> I also run Ubuntu Hardy 8.04 LTS (and Debian Etch) on my G5 iMac, and know
> firsthand the difficulties of what is involved with supporting a PPC
> distrubution of any sort.
>
> Using gNewSense on my HP-Pavilion s7700n pc as a guide, I'd like to at least
> _voluntarily_ follow the FSF guidelines on a personal level and help guide
> friends that I have installed the ppc Ubuntu version on by doing the
> following:  (I could go the Gentoo route I suppose, but would like to at
> least get as close as I can to FSF guidelines with Ubuntu for my friends who
> are not make-install savvy. :)
>
> * Lock out improper repositories - lock down the sources.list file etc
>
> * Use free video drivers, lock out glx and dri.  Usually not a problem
> because proprietary drivers don't exist for ppc!
>
> * Not sure about the wi-fi since I'm not doing wifi with airport cards -
> I'll have to research that.
>
> * Disabling non-free kernel modules - I could use some help here from other
> Ubuntu / Debian ppc users to see how much I can get away with.
>
> * Use gNewSense repos on my pc as a reference - for instance running  the
> Epiphany-browser instead of Firefox etc.  New program? - consult the
> gNewSense repos first, mailing lists, irc etc.
>
> * I'm not sure on the freedom-status of PPC's openfirmware in forth -
> another thing to check
>
> While this might be good personally, does anyone feel that it isn't really
> worth the effort if it doesn't follow the fsf guidelines 100 percent?
>

I don't know if this is too unrealistic or difficult, but the most
foolproof way to have a ppc system as free as gnewsense would be to
port gnewsense to ppc. The main gnewsense team may not currently be
abel to support ppc, but with your help they might be able to. The
main advantage to using actual gnewsense is that even without non-free
modules, ubuntu's ppc kernels will have non-free firmware.

Possibly not a viable option, but just my two pence.

-- 
Ben Webb - http://www.freedomdreams.co.uk/blog
Freedom Socks Podcast - http://freedomsocks.co.uk/
Unlock your computing - http://getgnulinux.org/