Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (3605 mails)

["Gaël Lams" <lamsgael@xxxxxxxxx>]

> > Now, if the kernel developers come up with a common and well-defined interface
> > for proprietary modules and make it well known to the hardware vendors, then
> > overall that would be a Good Thang (tm).  I guess that is their plan but it
> > seems they jumped the gun a bit and have made the situation worse in the
> > short-term.
>
> The actual way to go is to get rid of proprietary modules.
>
> I really wonder why some people want them and not OSS drivers...

I fully agree. I understand the frustration one can feel (I'm an
end-user too), also because one tends to choose the OS that supports
the best his/her hardware and not the other way around, but I'm not
happy with all these blobs being included in linux distributions.

Binary-only drivers run at a really privileged security level which
gives them access to anything on your system, and if they screw up it
can be a disaster. With drivers that have full source available,
people can see what the driver is doing and make corrections as
required. Using binary drivers makes you dependent on the vendors who
provide them for fixing bugs and honestly, if I moved to Linux, it's
to avoid it.

Regards,

Gaël