I compiled Linux-libre 4.17.6 last night, and was pleased to see that my
simple old laptop with an i3 and Intel graphics and an atheros wifi card is
working perfectly with it today on openSUSE Tumbleweed running KDE Plasma.
I've used Trisquel and Parabola on my laptops for several years, but always
wanted to see if I could strip out the non-libre parts from Tumbleweed and
have a very interesting bleeding edge libre distro with some tools like YaST.
Unfortunately, despite using Trisquel and Parabola, my reading on free and
non-free packages is not up to speed. I'd be interested to hear any
suggestions in trying to find and strip out the non-libre parts from
openSUSE. Possibly it's just an impossible task, but I think it would be fun
to try.
So the questions I have are if there are any built-in freedom problems? Are
there freedom issues with KDE Plasma or YaST that I won't be able to
overcome? I've studied them both in a cursory fashion, and both projects seem
to claim that they are "open", but I know that claims of "openness" often
don't equate to the 4 freedoms. Obviously I could run it with a free desktop
if Plasma is a problem. Getting rid of YaST may not be so simple.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Andy
