Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> writes: > Simon Josefsson <simon@josefsson.org> writes: > >> I recall that it took ~5 years until hardware (usually audio, video, >> network cards) was well supported with stable releases of free software >> distributions in the 1990's. Often it was never possible to get some >> hardware to work with free software, especially laptops. This has >> pretty much been the same since then. > > I think what you're missing is that this changed about ten or fifteen > years ago. I can now buy a new off-the-shelf computer and run Debian on > it *immediately* because Linux now supports modern hardware and you don't > have to run ancient gear. Do you mean install Debian using our non-free installer? I've seen several times here the argument that Debian does NOT work on modern hardware, and that's why Debian must change or we risk being obsolete and users go away. My experience is the same as you describe, with the free installer: if you pick the right hardware, Debian works directly today. If you pick the wrong hardware, you may need the non-free installer and/or wait a couple of years for support, and risk never being able to run Debian. The loop seems similar to what we did 20+ years ago: you buy a modern Sun, DEC, SGI etc workstation and install the GNU tools on it to get a decent free software environment. I believe Debian's primary contribution was that it put together all the free software in a way that I didn't first have to install (and maintain) SunOS, OSF/1, IRIX etc before getting to the decent free environment. Over time we added (as an option) the non-free installer so Debian also starts on uncooperative hardware. That's helpful. What it seems this vote is about is to go back to the time where a non-free work is required before you can get to the decent free environment. /Simon
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