Is Linux a desktop operating system?

hagen van rissenbeck news4didascali at gmx.net
Thu May 26 09:24:12 UTC 2005


Senectus . schrieb:

>I'm possibly getting a little bit away from the original topic but
>I've been wondering why it is that when you install Ubuntu there isn't
>a "choice" that asks if you'd like to install the "completely free
>version" (read: GNU friendly) like the current default install, or the
>"Mostly free version" with non open binaries such as nvidia/ATI
>drivers video codecs and other such software that, although are not
>open they are legal to use?
>  
>
That's something like this I am thinking about...

That could be a got idea for linux newbies.

But on the other hand...nvidia driver are closed source.
So you start to give up the principle of open software...and that is an 
existential problem.


But another solution could be to write scripts that automate the 
installation of nvidia drivers or something else.

I'm playing also with suse. Suse does not offer packages of xine which 
support libdvdcss. At the packman website, they offered scripts for 
download to install libdvdcss on specific suse-versions. When you start 
those scripts, they do everything automated which could be very 
difficult for a newbie: downloading the libdvdcss - packages from 
videolan, compiling and installing them. That worked fine.

Why not writing scripts which install automated for example 
flash-plugins and other stuff? You could handle it also as a level of 
the installation process, for example "configuring multimedia" or 
something like that.

Hagen




More information about the ubuntu-users mailing list