Am Dienstag, 14. Februar 2006 18:06 schrieb Marcus Meissner:
I keep seeing this referred to, but I can't find any reference to it anywhere, I've glanced through the opensuse mail archives, opensuse news, Novell news, searched the Novell site (kernel remove/ban closed source/non-GPL), same with Google, for such a big change, it doesn't seem to have hit any news sites... Either that or the announcement doesn't include any of the keywords above...
http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse-announce/2006-Feb/0004.html
Ciao, Marcus
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Yep, I found that, but that just refers to a change in the mechanism due to this concern. It doesn't explain what exactly is meant by this removal and its implications for end users, and what Novell/SUSE will be doing to ensure their customers aren't affected by this change.
Several modules will be gone from the shipping media.
There will be an interface between 3rd party vendors and Novell to provide kernel modules (in the KMP style described there), making it easy for those 3rd party vendors to build modules.
They can be offered by those vendors as easily installable resource (RPMs).
Nothing is stopping normal packagers (like the packman guys, or who ever) to not just also offer kernel modules in this way.
I understand (don't know for sure) that we are working with NVIDIA and ATI to make downloading their drivers possible this way.
That's good news, especially if ATi drivers can be delivered in the same way as the nVidia drivers currently are (i.e. autoscript from YOU)! I love SUSE with my nVidia machines, run YOU during install and everything is up and working. With ATi it is a nightmare, tried installing the beta on my laptop and the ATi's driver installer barfed somewhere along the line :-(
This is btw one reason for the packagemanager changes, that this package installation from multiple external sites is possible.
Ciao, Marcus
Thanks Marcus. OK, things are starting to make sense. The way this information is slowly leaking out in snippets in emails and during the IRC meeting is frustrating and could lead to a lot of confusion and doubt. Something of this importance really should be communicated on the news or roadmap pages with detailed information on what it means for users. Dave