I agree that you have some good and valid points.

But there are demographics to consider towards linux users.
You have the sysadmins, hardcore gamers, the power users, the average users, students, developers and more.
Trying to cater for all in my opinion is not that simple.

For example in past deployments of servers I only deployed Debian stable, headless with no X and that was rock solid after a kernel recompile. Then loaded apache, squid, cups, samba, etc...

For the average user. Debian testing with all of the fancy supported hardwares. And that was still more solid than Micro$oft.

I sincerely believe Devuan should aim for rock solid "stable" first as a priority with support for server/desktop NICs of all sorts, NICs bonding, vlans support, Xen, qemu, etc...
And then concentrate on the power users hardwares next. Licensing support will be a bitch there...

Not too sure if you all agree but priorities first imho.

Thanks,
Yves


On 19 December 2014 5:18:26 AM AEST, frank ernest <doark@???> wrote:
>> >> And this is important if you see that the Suse Server (for
>example)
>> >> doesn’t have a problem providing you with firmware.
>> >
>> > Unfortunately this was one of the decisive criteria my employer
>decided
>> > to use SuSE instead of Debian.
>>
>> Just this afternoon i wrote hw requirements for my client. Free
>drivers
>> are mandatory, nvidia explicitly excluded.
>>
>> > I'd rather stick with a Devuan that actually can be used in a
>> > professional environment; I think we agree here.
>>
>> Professional environments should use professional hardware.
>> Harware w/o open specs is not professional.
>>
>
>It seems to me we are kinda at an impass, if I want a powerful graphics
>card I
>have to get nvidia or AMD's radeon series which both require, to get a
>lot out
>of the card, proprietary or partaily proprietary drivers. But if I want
>something that works well and that I might modify, then those are out
>of the
>question.
>As for the question of "Professional hardware" I think you'll find many
>people
>who will dissagree with your definition of it (FYI I'm not amoung
>them).
>However, either way it seems that the hardware market has the upper
>hand since
>they can, and probably will, just strangle linux into the weakest
>drivers and
>cards on the market. That will in turn kill the demand for linux, not
>because
>there is something wrong with linux and your above stated ideals mind
>you,
>but rather, most people, my self included to some extent, judge linux,
>at first, by it's:
>
>GPU prefomance.
>Boot speed.
>Quantity of bugs.
>Severity of bugs.
>Whether it runs on/with there current hardware (including printer(s)).
>Ease of use.
>Games.
>
>But not necessarily in that order.
>As a reasult, those of us that might have become brillent software devs
>and
>great community contributers, never reach the level of expertiece that
>proprietary software can never allow or bestow. So Linux, being
>that it is grown, tested, and developed, by the community, can't
>survive
>because there is no community to do the above stated work.
>So, sadly, either way you loose, at least until someone, that
>understands the worth of Linux or open specs, becomes a hardware dev
>and publishes the specs, or founds such a company. There was a
>laptop, crowd funded, that did just that, but I can't remember
>the url, they started shipping this october. Aside from this one
>instance, I know of no other.
>
>David
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