[PLUG] 1st Open PC avail end of Feb!

Mike Connors mconnors1 at gmail.com
Wed Jan 27 17:54:36 UTC 2010


m0gely wrote:
> I'm not a developer. So this has no immediate adverse effect on me. 
> Having said that, my well endowed Latitude seems to work 100% with 
> Ubuntu 9.x. The integrated webcam, the illuminated keyboard and ambient 
> light sensor, the bluetooth, wired and wireless, all expansion ports, 
> suspend, hibernate, everything, out of the box. Aside from that, I can 
> only assume the models Dell offers with Linux preinstalled that they 
> work equally as well. I might also assume this is even better on the 
> Thinkpad side of the fence based on years of hearing positive 
> experiences from friends and online.
>
> How much of the above to I get from Dell? Apparently it doesn't matter 
> in my case. Whoever is responsible for writing code in Ubuntu seemed to 
> have no problem making it work on my laptop either way.
This is the same mis-perception that I had about open hardware.
Which is that if open source sw runs on it than it must be open.
This is a much different definition that Keith L. and Steve D. have put 
forth.

Drivers can be reverse engineered. Ubuntu includes the use of
proprietary drivers, as where Debian won't include FOSS sw like
Thunderbird or Firefox just on the premise of branding alone.

Even if Dell, IBM, Intel, etc provide open source drivers it still 
doesn't make
the hardware open. It just means they decided to play nice
w. the Linux/FOSS community.






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