Quoting Steve Litt (slitt@???):

> Ubuntu installs as easily as Windows' first boot nonsense. Devuan isn't
> far behind, on most hardware.

Interesting point about that, which I'll get to, near the end.

> What Eric objected to, and I agreed, was lack of proper handling of
> proprietary blobs, firmware and drivers, when absolutely necessary,
> makes Devuan installation as hard or harder than Arch, Gentoo or Funtoo.

The best of my understanding is that Devuan Project has _no _policy
forbidding inclusion of proprietary firmware BLOBs (Binary Large
OBjects) with installers -- and that the desktop-live image _includes_
them (as does the minimal-live image). After bootup, at the user's
option it runs refractainstaller-gui to bulk-install Devuan w/BLOBs to a
target drive for installed use.

Eric didn't state in his rant (perhaps he did on IRC, but I've discarded
my channel log) _which_ installer he used. I suspect it was the
'installer-iso' CD or DVD images, which use the d-i installer. (I note
in passing that desktop-live has long been 'the recommended choice for
desktop users wanting to try Devuan out', to quote the ascii release
notes.)

(You distinguish 'proprietary blobs' from 'firmware', but those are
actually a single thing.)

Eric's primary beef about 'drivers' related to his wife Cathy's Intel NUC with
an unstated but apparently spanking-new Intel e1000 NIC variant unknown
to whatever-installer-he-used's kernel's PCI IDs table. Like Devuan's
sister distribution Debian, Devuan for _excellent_ reasons (stability,
lack of inclination to corrupt data) uses chosen stable-release codes
for many packages with backported fixes. My understanding is that the
Linux kernel in devuan-ascii's installer-iso images is Linux 4.9.82.

That's really pretty recent, IMO. Upstream (kernel.org) there are
currently three 'longterm' kernel codebases: 4.14.89, 4.9.146, and
4.4.168. So, by that measure, 4.9.82 is relatively unexceptional at the
end of 2018 as a long-term-supported distro kernel.

Checking the current stable releases of some of my favourite desktop
distros:

Siduction: 4.16.8 (but being stabilised Debian-Sid, is cutting-edge)
Bodhi Linux: 4.15
Artix Linux: 4.18.10 (but again a cutting-edge rolling distro)
antiX: 4.9.126

Holding my nose and checking the big names:

CentOS: 3.10 (yes, really!)
openSUSE: 4.12.14
Ubuntu: 4.18
Linux Mint: 4.15
Mageia: 4.19.6

As you'll see, 4.9.82 (even with backported fixes) is a bit more
derrière than avant garde, but not badly so.

Not coincidentally, the latest refresh of Debian-stretch (latest
Debian-stable) installs with 4.9.30, so I suspect Devuan-ascii ended up
with a 4.9.82 because of the two release's related origin.


For completeness, Eric had a minor beef about one of his Jetway hosts
('grue') requiring what he caled 'the Radeon blob' (in the paragraph you
allude to, by your reference to 'leaving his video cards with
non-proprietary software that doesn't handle resolution as well'). I'm
guessing this is a slight error on his part, that for his desired high
resolutions grue requires proprietary AMD Redeon _driver_ (currently a
driver series named 'amdgpu-pro', replacing driver series 'fglrx'),
which of course include firmware BLOBs but rather a lot more than that.
And, last I heard, AMD doesn't permit anyone but itself to distribute
that software, so _no_ Linux distro can lawfully include it.

Alternatively, it's possible Eric was talking about using the open
source AMDGPU drivers integral to X.org (xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu), but
he didn't have non-free omnibus metapackage firmware-linux (or specific
non-free package firmware-amd-graphics) available by default because he
started with an installer-iso ISO rather than a desktop-live one.

Which (then) was unfortunate, but radically overblown in his rant's retelling.

By the way, Golinux with help from one of the other regulars has a
revision to the main Devuan Web pages to very pithily guide newcomers to
sensible-for-them choice of installer. The improvement is in beta,
coming to the live site soon.

> By the way, I disagree with Eric about the degree of badness in leaving
> his video cards with non-proprietary software that doesn't handle
> resolution as well. Once you can boot your system and run it, the
> installer has done its job. If user friendliness is desired, a separate
> program can be used to select the right proprietary drivers, blobs and
> firmwares.

Yes, one might envision a Devuan wrapper package that grabs the latest
proprietary amdgpu-pro tarball off the ATI site and does a devuanised
installation. Of course, there are complications such as that the
firmware-amd-graphics package contents being _also_ present slows down
video performance greatly. Given the tendency of desktop users to just
throw everything possible at a problem and then vaguely complain that it
'didn't work', it would probably be wise for such a wrapper package to
check for that and other likely FTDNF bugs ('family tree does not fork').


I promised to angle back to an observation prompted by your mention of
'Ubuntu installs', so here y'are:

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, as elsewhere, Canonical, Ltd. has
done relentless marketing for quite a few years, and part of that is
roping in volunteers to be unpaid sales staff. One local example, who
shall go nameless here, was particularly loud and aggressive --
reportedly under the mistaken impression that he'd be hired as full-time
staff -- and (circa 2011-12) kept blanketing Bay Area LUG lists with a
claim that Ubuntu is the only distro that could _possibly_ ever be
justified for 'simple end users', citing as particular advantages its
desktop A/V support.

After I'd had enough of this rubbish, I commented:


[Canonical's] recent marketing reach has been undeniable, much of it
made possible by the efforts of volunteers like [name omitted].
However, whether it has actually _met_ the needs, real or perceived, of
those 'simple end users' is a more complex question. (And that's
without even talking about Unity, Mac-styled buttons for no reason other
than marketing, etc.)
[...]

Problem is: Some of the stuff new users typically seek (proprietary
codecs and such; see below), and complain about the absence of,
_is missing_ by default. By policy. I respect those omissions; there are
good reasons for them, and there are 'restricted formats' pages (etc.)
about how to retrofit them.

And yet the point remains.

Linux Mint and Ultimate Edition are Ubuntu with those things _merged in_.
So, if the aim is to make things as easy as humanly possible for 'simple
end users', shouldn't they merit higher recommendation? And shouldn't
PCLinuxOS, MEPIS Linux, nd Zenwalk Linux _also_ merit higher
recommendation by that same reasoning?

The gentleman made no comment on thus being called out for logical
inconsistency. (He may, however, have a promising future career in
politics.) But that's not really my point.

After amending my Web pages for new users to say that if you seek
maximally painless access to 'desktop Linux' goodies as your main
criterion, you should seek out Linux Mint flavours or Ultimate Edition
rather than Ubuntu, I noticed an interesting thing. There was little
interest. Why? Too much choice. Classic 'desktop' users often claim
they value choice, but complain and evince avoidance behaviour if faced
with it.

Examine https://www.ubuntu.com/ as if you were a newcomer, and you find
that the presentation is soothingly sparse. If you gravitate towards
download, you're pushed by presentation emphasis to the latest LTS
release AMD64 Ubuntu Desktop live-CD ISO, and it even autodownloads --
one click from the main page and the rest is automatic. No choices --
ones are present, but are de-emphasised.

Go to https://linuxmint.com/ in the same frame of mind, and you're
not guided at all: You're shown a page with choices. Do you want
Cinnamon, MATE, or XFCE? Do you want 64-bit or 32-bit? i Then, which
mirror do you want to use, or would you perhaps prefer a torrent?

http://ultimateedition.info/ : There's not actually a download link as
such, just a wall of information. If you dig, you can find a choice
among a whole lot of Ultimate Edition releases, and then when you pick
one another wall of text and at the very bottom a 'SOURCEFORGE' (not
'download)' link that eventually starts a long, slow download.

The typical 'desktop' user wants magic to happen automatically, no text
to read, no choices.

Ubuntu's sparse and user-directing model was consciously modeled after
that of the company we old-timers remember as Apple Computer, Inc. (now
just 'Apple'). We were all very bemused with all the slick, sparse,
marketing for 'Macintosh' -- never '_the_ Macintosh', but rater
'Macintosh', as in I run Macintosh, I use Macintosh, and oh, is that
part of Macintosh? To this day, compleat MacHeads get discomfited if
you talk about -things-. There aren't supposed to be distinct things,
only Macintosh and more Macintosh. I've been known to (mischieviously)
upset them by saying 'Oh, I love Macintoshes. They make great Linux
machines.'

And that, I wish to point out, appears to be the sort of thing necessary
and desirable for "Linux desktop computing'.

(Me, I am not often overly concerned about the travails of those lacking
technical aptitude and interest, unless paid to be.)