Canonical's Abandoned Free Software Ubuntu Distro

[@leevi6026]

BTW: If you like this kind of content then you should consider donating to the Internet Archive, they do such a great job preserving information needed for these kind of videos with their Wayback Machine, and they depend on the donations quite a lot. And if you like this kind of content you should obviously also consider supporting Brodie through the links in the description. (I don't know why my last comment got deleted after adding that supporting Brodie part, so re-posting. EDIT: I think it was the "P-word" because I had to remove it to get this through).

[@BrodieRobertson]

You don't need to support me but please support the internet archive, without it I wouldn't be able to do a lot of these videos

[@anon_y_mousse]

This makes me sad. Gnubuntu would've been the perfect name for such a distro. The logo could've been an open hand coming to slap you in the face.

[@that_leaflet]

How does Stallman think LiGNUx is a good idea, but not Gnubuntu?

[@OhhCrapGuy]

Because it's Stallman, his sense of style is inverted

[@nitrogenez]

if you drink it you turn into lignux

[@ebfromtha410]

Because Stallman is autistic

[@itismezed]

@@testingjoaox002 or the lack thereof

[@raxcentalruthenta1456]

Because Stallman is an overzealous puritan with an over-inflated ego.

[@slaapliedje]

To be fair, Debian up until Bookworm was always derided as being hard to install... because you usually had to add firmware blobs after install, and usually had non-free software repositories disabled. It is probably the best supportrd and oldest of any of the distros you could very easily make it properly 'free'.

[@cameronbosch1213]

I think this actually started from the 6 "Squeeze" release. Before that this didn't seem to be the case. Fortunately, they've seen the light with 12 "Bookworm" release.

[@Poldovico]

The only adding of firmware blobs I ever needed on Debian has been nvidia-driver, and that's the same everywhere.

[@Poldovico]

@@cameronbosch1213 Bookworm has contrib and non-free disabled by default, too. EDIT: oh, right. They spun non-free-firmware into a separate repo and enabled it by default, for stuff that makes hardware go brrr.

[@Redmage913]

I need Realtek drivers occasionally for some of my wireless devices, and a miscellaneous dkms package for my memory card reader on my laptop. You need firmware for AMD graphics as well on Debian unless you install from an unofficial live disc.

[@slaapliedje]

@@Poldovico yeah, I am talking mostly about wifi blobs.

[@No-mq5lw]

Just FYI, a handful of the FSF approved distros don't have much in the way of a pulse anymore. Last I checked, Dragora has like 2 maintainers (1 actually within the last year), Dynebolic is kind of dead on purpose, and Ututo is an install script (that you will probably have to manually change) on top of Ubuntu 16.04. Hyperbola and Parabola still have their motions, but given that they are based on Arch, you could always do the linux-libre stuff yourself without the rails anyways. Not sure if Purism is planning on making another release of PureOS, so Guix and Trisquel is essentially the only stand out of the bunch that's active and will probably stay active.

[@electricindigoball1244]

That's not really surprising. At the end of the day the majority of Linux users want a functioning system and for most people that means needing some non-free software/driver/firmware etc. If a distro doesn't have many users then even fewer people will be willing to maintain it.

[@perpetualcollapse]

I’ve been using Trisquel on my librebooted MacBook 2,1 and had no idea of the history of the attempts to make a libre Ubuntu. Crazy.

[@Stroopwafe1]

Just booted up an Ubuntu 23.10 desktop VM. There is no option to only use free software. There are options for extra features that might be proprietary, and you can disable those, but it's not explicitly stated that you get a purely free system

[@rebeginme]

please do tell how GNOME ended up evolving beyond a GNU project, I’d be very interested in that story, especially as a GNOME user. (or history of any desktop environments in general)

[@FrankoBurolo]

I remember many, many years ago i was using BLAG for a while, an entirely free software distro which worked perfectly with the laptop I was using at the time. Unfortunately, BLAG has been discontinued for a long time now, but it was a rather cool distro back then.

[@lucyfrye6723]

Ultra-orthodox and ideologically pure. That makes me smile. The world sometimes needs canaries in the coal mine. Do your thing, guys. Remain vigilant. And one day you might be able to say that you have been warning about disaster X all along and the rest of us just didn't see. Whatever X may be.

[@stroodlepup]

remember when we still had to install adobe flash plugins? Pepperidge farm remembers..

[@moarjank]

We still do - but less often. Ruffle ftw

[@MarkParkTech]

I never use these purist distro's because I paid for my hardware and I expect it to function. While I would love to have a system that does what I need it to do without binary blobs, the sad fact is there are no free options that enable me to do that in 99.9% of cases, and in the other .1% most of those are unstable with random crashes and what not because they do not perfectly replicate what the hardware is expecting which is what it would be getting from the binary blobs. I do support efforts at reversing the binary blobs to make hardware usable that would otherwise not be without them. The unfortunate reality is that by the time they re-implement all the things to successfully run the hardware, that hardware has become obsolete and the current hardware will not work with the code produced by the old efforts. The solution would be for hardware vendors to open their driver base, however, I know that will probably never happen within my lifetime. Some driver bases have started opening up, but not enough, and not in a lot of places where it REALLY matters ( network drivers for example ). I am at a loss of any workable solution for the current hardware/software environment to fix that.

[@formbi]

the Talos II is fully libre but very expensive

[@webmonkey44]

@@formbii believe even that has a binary blob on hardware they could fully get rid of.

[@cameronbosch1213]

Hey Brodie, could you link to your Debian FSF explanation video? I can't seem to find it...

[@OraOraOra]

A talk about GNUME would be nice! Great vid.

[@AnubisWithCoffee]

Using Nobara 39 here, Cant escape some non-free software in this day and age, but you can actively minimize it while maintaining a reasonable online QoL. And let's be real, I like video games so I need my Steam / Heroic and Lutris!

[@formbi]

1:19 Brodie is in 3024 already (is Wayland finished?)

[@Chaunton]

Some of this FSF purity stuff is a GNUisance.

[@elalemanpaisa]

Debian ships with blobs you could opt for Foss but since they offer with closed software (and now ship even by default in V12) it's not endorsed

[@RichardJActon]

It's important that we know that a fully 'free' distro is basically impossible because it should be possible and I hope these guys keep going until we make the changes necessary for it to be possible.

[@KoopstaKlicca]

"maybe you run a free software distro now" LOL

[@StaceyAyodele]

I run Debian 12 Bookworm with KDE. I freaking love Debian. To hell with Ubuntu and Canonical's BS.

[@torspedia]

Might end up doing that myself soon... and installing software via the 3 universal formats!

[@albertovaldez1444]

I use Trisquel, it's a fully libre distro, everything works well, maybe because my hardware is a bit old, I really like freedom

[@BrainStormzFTC]

Old hardware embeds the firmware in the BIOS and the individual chips, while newer hardware usually loads it at runtime. It's a distinction without a difference, either way you can't modify the firmware, so the way FSF draws the line just makes no sense.

[@NugentFan]

hi. what is your gpu? does wayland works on it?

[@sofiaknyazeva]

1:21 Correction, 2005 and not 3005

[@TheBenSanders]

I’ve been enjoying dual booting EndeavourOS on my PC. Though Windows keeps not wanting to to share 😂

[@zxuiji]

I just run manjaro XFCE because I don't strongly care about the copy left sense of values. If it's free and not malicous, and submits at bare minimum the bug fixes (not just for security flaws) then that's good enough for me. Better if they submit the new features and speed improvements they make but it's understandable if commercial product developers don't do that, they gotta have some way of competing with other products.

[@aniksamiurrahman6365]

To be honest, I see free software movement being chocked to death. Not by evil corporates, but mainly by greedy IT people themselves.

[@haroldcruz8550]

Ubuntu Pro was the last straw for me, going back to Arch for desktop and Debian for server

[@Durayne]

Being honest. My initial - fully aware that it was linux -contact with linux was gutsy gibbon. Was it 08.04? I made a dual boot with windows, but defaulted to windows everytime I wanted to play games. So after setting the PC up anew I removed it. Like 12 years later I switched to mint on my day to day use laptop. And for day2day use I have all but one program I need to fall back to a web application because it just does not work on linux. With the Linus Tech Tips challenge, I then made my own challenge, banning windows from my gaming mashine as well and installing arch. That was a hard trail, but after the initial struggle I dont miss windows one bit there. Coming back to Ubuntu, at work there are some Ubuntu machines and Comparing them to Mint just left me mindblown. I mean mint is based on ubuntu, and yet in so many aspects mint just seems so superior. And the main reason to me it seems, that ubuntu seems just so bloated, slow and cluttery. Everything seems just outright so much slower than on my laptop.

[@KoopstaKlicca]

fsf having issues with trademark logos proves to me how out of touch the fsf is. Like protesting with libre software is already kind of a virtue signal, but jeez

[@orbatos]

I remember this, kind of surprised you missed it, but then again Linux history has a lot of wacky skeletons. A few notes about things I remember: - Hurd had "recent" activity, i tried it, it was of course still unusable..... - The claim about Ubuntu accelerating adoption was really true even then, thanks in part to the free cd campaign and it's general ease of use. I helped a lot of people install it myself. - gNewSense ... Wasn't great. That's really all one can say. To most people it seemed like RMS was deliberately using the oldest functioning x86 hardware he could find. Later that would literally be true as he tried to avoid the Intel ME infestation. - It was very clear Shuttleworth wasn't actually interested in the fsf goals, but really wanted the endorsement. Gnubuntu/Ubuntu libre/gobuntu were just a means to an end.

[@merthyr1831]

The Free Software Foundation might consider renaming themselves to the Abandonware Foundation because outside of coreutils they pretty much have no interest in actually maintaining any of their software.

[@leopard3131]

Talking to GNU is like talking to Vegans. I fully support GNU , except when it comes to the requirement for closed source proprietary code to run my hardware. They just go too far in the case where there is no open source alternative. In this event I wish they would acknowledge when there is no open source option. I do support pressuring hard ward developers to provide an open source option, buy as we find with developers, you can't force them to do anything. I do run the libre kernel if I can and I have run Trisquel, Parabola, and dyne:bolic on compatible hardware although I had to patch the -libre kernel for my hardware.

[@Your_Degenerate]

Ha ha ha, that logo. It would of been better if instead of a fist the hand was making the metal "devil horns" sign.

[@KertaDrake]

The biggest takeaway from this video I got is that people into open-source are both terrible at naming things and have an unhealthy obsession with inserting "GNU" into names.

[@thecrow3461]

5:45 first thing that comes to mind when seeing that logo is communist ubuntu land

[@FilthyPitDog]

I use Gentoo Linux btw

[@AshNonokPlays]

"HURD IS DEAD"

[@darsparx]

Just wish I could support this shiz....fsf level things I just can't support. It's too wild to drop all bits you don't like like they do, it's just not possible to that extreme. I love the thought process but don't think we'll get to that point tbh anytime soon just for compatability sake. Let alone those who like games either 😅

[@cartelion]

Just Run Debian 12, its is fully Free.

[@tylerdean980]

Why does everyone shit on FSF distros? There's nothing wrong with them, and yes, it works on my machine. Even wifi. (Atheros)

[@BrodieRobertson]

Because sadly you need proprietary drivers and firmware for a lot of modern hardware

[@Winnetou17]

@@BrodieRobertson I expect (read: hope) that with the rise of things like Raspberry Pi 5 being good enough for desktop use (and it surely-many-incoming clones) and also RISC-V getting mainstream, getting hardware with free drivers and firmware (maybe even the hardware itself to be free) might be a thing. Like something that actually works and is easy to use.

[@temp50]

@@Winnetou17 That's just the SoC and maybe the iGP. But what about peripherals and extension cards, etc...?

[@Winnetou17]

@@temp50 Well, not everything will be available from the getgo. If I'm not mistaken there's still some peripherals that are basically unusable on Linux because they don't have drivers and nobody has time or resources to reverse engineer one. So initially it will be just rather basic stuff - CPU, GPU, mouse, keyboard, wired and wireless network, I guess bluetooth too. The rest... well, if what I wrote above will happen, the rest will come too, later, as the need for them will increase. But that's like more than 5 years into the future, I'm afraid.

[@CSCITEK]

I don't care if it is unfree as long as it is free

[@t01]

guix could be better than nix if not by this fsf ideological bs

[@cholling1]

Guix is just Nix with fewer packages and more parentheses

[@formbi]

you can just add the nonguix repo

[@cericat]

Yeah the big problem is not the FSF, but its daddy rms. He's both one of the biggest reasons we have the ecosystem we do but also our single biggest liability. Even the FSF rank and file tend to agree, his reelection to the board led to more people quitting they were so pissed he was back.