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pfp: ah_to_hk separatist Hong Kong political cartoon that ironically made Olympic gold medalist Vivian Kong look very based. (src)

Read Free Software, Free Society pls

  • 12 Posts
  • 682 Comments
Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: March 11th, 2024

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  • This means that for everyone else, this information is irrelevant.

    True, when Microsoft tells its customers that their computers can’t upgrade to Windows 11 because of “hardware requirements” they were obviously not lying through their teeth, totally not because the margins are higher when people buy new computers (and the bloody yankee mining supply chain can continue at full speed).

    It’s not like x86_64 laptops keep advertising AI capabilities through their new NPU units and thus can do the same thing as ARM snapdragon chips.

    The software is proprietary, what they tell you is what they want and are willing to tell you.



  • If I were to explain it more specifically (sans people are dumb level takes), when something is part of the dominant hegemony (Windows has almost become synonymous with the personal computer, something still connected to a Pax Americana mythos) and people aren’t educated on different options then all people have are anecdotes and personal wisdom. Windows as a brand and as a force in computer technology warps everything around it, not the other way around. That’s why we see so many conflicting opinions on Windows, there’s not a leg for people to stand on and judge their experiences objectively. People’s lives depend on the very thing that’s hurting them.

    Add a huge splash of US hegemony to the mix and you can see how Silicon Valley is the technological Hollywood of the world. Communal efforts to create software for the common good is one of the main ways to combat this because it gives us an external vocabulary outside of the silicon valley ideology that’s taught to us. I only really started to understand how computers work when I delved into free software projects.







  • What’s your point here? That volunteers not financially backed by the US regime don’t magically have the capacity to reverse engineer the dozens upon dozens of blobs that get added to the kernel every release cycle? Or that they’re even trying at all? Both aren’t a good look for whatever you’re trying to say

    they’re not adding anything of value.

    Now you’re just being vindictive towards others and I really don’t like that. It doesn’t cost anything to not be unkind towards people’s contributions. You’re free to criticize the approach but I draw the line at the idea that it is worthless because none of this work is.


  • Is it really a fork if all you do is take upstream and remove the blobs?

    Yes that’s what a fork is, a disagreement with upstream’s direction and taking your own measures. Git is a decentralized version control system that allows for this.

    What code has this fork created that makes it novel?

    Deblob scripts and regularly checking the source code for complying licenses. They regularly follow upstream kernel releases and are the first ones to signal license issues and inconsistencies.

    Have they tried to replace those blobs with open source drivers?

    I should have been more specific. Virtually all drivers in the upstream Linux kernel are licensed under a libre license. However, manufacturer firmware (small amounts of code designed to “unlock” the device’s capabilities) are distributed as a binary blob that gets loaded into your computer (you’re allowed to redistribute the firmware in binary form, but not anything else). The Linux kernel’s upstream (aka Torvalds and other high level maintainer’s own trees) allows the use of nonfree firmware for device support (AKA getting your foot into the door). In short, no modern computer device that people use regularly is free from private tampering. Who are these “private” tamperers? The US-led digital empire.

    If you have a machine (or more likely, a virtual machine) that doesn’t require device firmware, then linux-libre is the superior kernel as it subtracts the space and attack vector costs of nonfree firmware. We aren’t at that point yet as CPU microcode is far too important to give up on physical hardware, but for nations in the Global South with the engineering capacity, linux-libre does all the work of de-westernizing the kernel.



  • The kernel has already been forked. The Linux-libre project maintains a completely-blob free kernel and people gave them shit over it. Why develop more kernels? why not centralize development? Now we have a clear example of why not to do that.

    This seems to be an attempt to stifle Russian hardware development from occurring in upstream. This means nothing to the actual downstream developers who will have their own kernel tree for their users in Russia.

    Love to see all the “POLITICS IN MY LINUX???” losers start flame wars over being proven wrong.

    Inb4 Chinese devs get removed for “compliance”, maybe they’ll just go mask off next time and say the real reason.