non-free should just work

[Tim Schmidt]

To some extent, I agree.  However, I'd much rather see some concrete
effort being put into free versions of all that popular software.  How
about it Mark?  Can you hire a developer or two to hack on a free Java
full time?  I know there are some great partial or mostly-complete
solutions out there, why not finnish them up?  I know Red Hat's been
doing some work on GCJ to that extent.

Of course, addressing things like patent-encumbered codecs is another
matter altogether.  As far as that goes, I guess I'd like to see
Ubuntu have world-class support for Ogg, FLAC, Speex, and Theora. 
That would make for a good start.  Theora is probably the only one of
those four that isn't featured prominently in Ubuntu already, so good
job.

Hmmm...  what about a desktop-nonfree meta package that depends on mp3
stuff, mpeg4 stuff, Java, Flash, etc. etc.  If a meta-package like
that could be set up in universe (or wherever) it would do much to
quiet unrest over non-free stuff that's percieved as 'needed' for
desktop use.  Something simple that just about anyone can 'Mark for
installation' in Synaptic and be done with it.  No need searching for
and selecting 20 different packages.  What do you think?

--tim


On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 09:57:47 -0500, Ross D <smoothrt at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see the thing limiting Ubuntu the most is the difficulty with
> getting non-free things working (java, flash, nvidida drivers, codecs
> for realplayer, etc.)  I've been a newbie using Ubuntu for a month
> now, constantly fighting with this and still only about 1/2
> successful.  Distrowatch.com illustrated exactly what I was feeling
> with their descriptionof MEPIS:
> 
> "What made MEPIS Linux successful? Unlike most of the major Linux
> distributions, MEPIS comes with many non-free, but highly useful
> applications, all pre-configured and ready to use, out of the box.
> These include the NVIDIA accelerated driver, Macromedia Flash plugin,
> Java, various multimedia codecs for playing popular audio and video
> files and other applications. With MEPIS Linux, there is no need to
> hunt for Java Runtime Environment, then search for the documentation
> to find out how to enable Java support in your browsers - it is all
> available right after installation. This simple idea proved
> tremendously popular, not only with users new to Linux, but also with
> the more experienced ones who found it convenient not having to spend
> hours of post-install configuration and tweaking just to set up a
> complete working desktop."
> 
> As a former mandrake user, the "just worked" concept applied for
> non-free software there as well.  I think it's crucial for Ubuntu's
> survival to deal with this in some fashion, these are some of the main
> reasons more people don't switch over to linux.  It can be too
> frustrating to get all of these little things working right.
> 
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