I think it’s important to have boundaries. If we keep our operating systems fully free, it will be harder for anyone to pressure us to add proprietary components to them. But if our OSes already contain non-free components, it’s not that hard to add more. We not only want freedom, we also want to keep it.

It also needs to be clear for the people in our community that our main goal is freedom and getting rid of proprietary software. Convenience is less important.

I didn’t say that I’m never going to install any firmware updates. I just don’t want to put it in my system if it’s proprietary.

The world won’t change itself. If people did nothing 40 years ago, there wouldn’t be a Free Software movement.

It sounds like you are not using a fully free distro anyway. Most of the popular distros contain proprietary firmware, so what’s the problem?

I am forced to keep proprietary firmware in my OS to use the hardware and that’s what you are advocating for. You want everyone to be forced to do that. But I don’t want anything proprietary in my system. I see no reason why I should have a proprietary firmware package installed for my GPU to work. The firmware could be just on the device itself and if someone wants to change it, then they can install the package in their OS. But maybe there could also be some other way.

You don’t know what the proprietary update contains. It can be a security fix, but also a backdoor. People can decide on their own if they want to update, but I see no reason why I must be forced to have proprietary stuff in my system. I want a fully libre distro. I can’t switch to one, because I would have to give up on using AMD GPUs, because people like you say that this is fine.

But nobody is saying that there shouldn’t be a way to update firmware. Firmware just shouldn’t a be part of the OS, unless it’s free. Adding proprietary components to our systems will only make it harder for us to keep our freedom.

The FSF’s stance is just based on our current capabilities. Most people still use proprietary operating systems. We are capable of developing free alternatives of non-free programs, even very complicated ones. But it’s not realistic to think that we can currently replace all firmware for any device if we don’t know how it works. The amount of products that have the RYF certificate is already very small. Even Librem 5 didn’t manage to get it. When it becomes easier, I’m sure they will change the requirements or add more levels.

I’m pretty sure Libreboot contains proprietary firmware now and GNU is planning to develop an actually libre fork. So it’s silly for the developer to criticize the FSF for not being radical enough. It makes me think that the person doesn’t really believe in what they are saying.

But then the author says they want us to have proprietary firmware packages in our systems. So they want our OSes to be less libre… They even compare not including proprietary firmware to burning books… I stopped reading after that.

Free Software gives you the 4 essential freedoms. One of them is the freedom to distribute the program. So anyone could legally give you a copy for free. Sounds like what you want, no?

Even if the authors implement some kind of DRM, any programmer can modify the program to remove that feature and share the modified version with everyone. Technically that is also possible with non-free software, but it’s illegal, pretty difficult and requires special skills.

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.en.html

We’ve had a way forward for 40 years and it’s called Free Software: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html

It’s super weird to me that pirates aren’t advocating for the Free Software movement. Being able to control their own devices should be like one of their main goals.

I know, I just wanted to explain the real reason why their UIs often suck. I agree that it has nothing to do with capitalism.

Lemmy is a perfect example of such project, btw. The devs can’t design a good UI themselves and they ignore people’s proposals, so users make their own themes and browser addons to fix it.

We can have nice software, people just need to care.

That is true and the reason for that is not capitalism, of course. Most projects don’t have UI experts and when someone wants to help, devs usually don’t listen. Sometimes there are technical obstacles too (old framework, hardcoded UI), but probably not in web or Electron apps.

compared to their paid alternative

Keep in mind that Libre Software can be commercial too, so you really mean proprietary alternatives.

As a UI developer I consider GNOME 4 to be one of the best desktop UIs. But some people prefer to live in the past and use 30 years old designs than try anything new, even if it might be better for them long term.

Nothing prevents Libre Software developers from making commercial products. They can sell their software just like everyone else.

Can I start with Gentoo or is that too easy?

I would say that security and privacy are also very important. That’s something you can’t get with Windows.

Congratulations! Next you might want to learn about the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

So, yeah, sell me on Linux, please.

Windows has spyware, so that should be enough reason to not use it for someone like you. You will have to spend some time to learn GNU/Linux, but for most office tasks it shouldn’t be difficult, especially if you are good with computers. Most popular distros already come with a PDF viewer and Libre Office, so it should be able to do almost everything you want out of the box. VLC player can play all common video types and is easy to install. Libre Office might have issues with some Word documents though, so you might need to look into that. A web browser (usually Firefox) and probably some email client will be preinstalled as well.

You might need to check if your printer and scanner will be supported out of the box or if extra drivers from the manufacturer are needed (then check if they are available on their website). I think printers will probably work fine out of the box, but scanners might require extra drivers (this depends on the model - there are models that don’t).

If you need more motivation, look into the Free Software movement: https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM

GNOME also has an app that lets you do encrypted incremental backups very easily.