That's what we are begging for: a solution to that problem.

Maybe a workaround would be a "patch" for D:B for old/not-free
hardware, so you always can choose instead of have this problem or not
being free about this choice.

2011/9/30 Lukasz Jastrzebski <luke.jastrzebski@???>:
> Hi!
>
> My conclusions are quite different, but first, define what is the old
> hardware, what does it mean?
> I'd say 10 years old hardware is a rare example of good manufacturing,
> and I quite frankly have problems to, for example, upgrade hardware
> with much newer components than this - and with few exceptions we're
> talking about second market here.
> I usually buy 4-6 years old hardware from what used to be the top
> shelf. I use them on a daily basis, they do what I want (for 10% of
> the price I should pay for a new one). But let's say that 10 years is
> giveaway level - no matter if this is a PC, laptop or whatever else -
> I assume it has USB, PCI, PCIMCIA if mobile, and around 256 MB of ram
> (even though half of it was kind of normal back then), 800MHz clock,
> leaving plenty of opportunities to upgrade it... I think that D:B will
> work on that.
> If it's worse - taking different distro, dedicated for old stuff
> should do the trick.
>
> And yes, no wi-fi from D:B works in my place as well, and the problem
> is the same as yours - lack of free drivers. I usually depend on
> wireless connectivity. The answer is as simple, as taking the cable
> and making it work. Wifi is just for ease of wandering around my
> house...
>
> Having binary blobs, or some not-so-free components inside Linux is
> not that good, but oh, come on guys! There always is a solution!
>
> Cheers,
> Ł
>
> 2011/9/30 sayhi2guy@??? <sayhi2guy@???>:
>> Hi
>>
>> Just a few thought son what I see as a conflict of goals in D:B's
>> philosophy.  On one hand d:b is committed to totally free software, but
>> D:B is also trying to be an OS to recycle old equipment (as in the
>> famous $0 laptop).
>>
>> People who depend on other peoples old unwanted
>> hardware cannot always choose what they want, especially whether the
>> hardware has free drivers.  There is an English saying that 'beggars
>> cannot be choosers.' As an example, both my computers are donated 'cast
>> offs' and the usb wireless on one needs the ralink firmware that D:B
>> does not include; I cannot just afford to go out and buy something else
>> so I cannot use that PC with D:B.
>>
>> The goal of encouraging someone to
>> only use hardware with free drivers is good, but not always practical:
>> The irony is that this hinders the people who need the free software
>> the most.
>>
>> Best wishes
>> Guy
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>>
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