On Wednesday 06 December 2006 19:56, John Hasler stood up and addressed the
masses in /gnu.misc.discuss/ as follows...:
> Aragorn writes:
>> But [Debian] does allow you to unwillingly or unknowingly install
>> non-free software...
>
> Explain exactly how this might happen.
Well, suppose you want something installed on Debian, and you use /apt-get/
to get it. How are you to know in advance whether what you're about to
install is Free or not?
It is the same on most other distributions, by the way. /yum/ on RedHat,
Fedora Core and CentOS or /urpmi/ on Mandriva. You simply install a
package by referring to it in a generic way, e.g. ...
urpmi kernel-sources
This will present you with a list of packages with the word "kernel-sources"
in their name, from which you then pick one (or multiple) and have it
installed.
If the distro's repositories contain non-Free packages, then those /might/
get installed as well, without that you know in advance whether what you're
installing is Free Software or not.
--
With kind regards,
*Aragorn*
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)
_______________________________________________
gnu-misc-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
