[Mageia-discuss] Hauppauge WinTV PVR-250

Hoyt Duff hoytduff at gmail.com
Sat Jun 4 17:57:02 CEST 2011


On 6/3/11, Gary Montalbine <gmontalbine at cox.net> wrote:

>
> I got the firmware from the IVTV site and copied  it to /lib/firmware
>


But that is a band-aid, a kludge, that gives you a cobbled-together
system, not to mention it does not really solve the problem for the
distro and the wider user base. And every time you need to install
Mageia on that hardware, you'll need to apply the kludge again and
again.

The goal should be to have a distro that 'just works'. Solving the
problem by copying files from outside the repositories may point out a
deficiency in Mageia repos, but not if the solution can be found
within.

And this brings up a point of having the tainted repos as "opt-in".
This thinking comes from a philosophy of some kind of "pure" Linux
which eschews non-free licensed software.However, some hardware can
only be useful with non-free software and it's unrealistic to pretend
that such hardware does not exist nor that those using such hardware
will have the knowledge and skill to enable the tainted repo.

I realize that the purists among us have decide to disable the tainted
repos by default, but those same people are the ones most likely to
have selected hardware that does not depend on non-free software and
they are also skilled Linux users. The opt-in approach serves to
advance their political agenda at the expense of having a distro that
'just works' for the average to non-technical user.

It may be more sense to enable the tainted repos by default and
provide an opt-out screen during the installation: "Repositories
offering access to software that have non-free licenses are enabled by
default. To keep your Mageia system unencumbered by software with
restrictive or non-free licenses, please un-check the box. Certain
hardware may not function without such non-free software and if you
are unsure, leave the box checked."

That gives users a choice, makes Mageia a 'just works' distro for the
average user and reduces the number of requests for assistance that
can be solved by using non-free software.

-- 
Hoyt


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