GNewSense

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The correct title of this article is gNewSense. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
gNewSense
Website: http://www.gnewsense.org/
Company/
developer:
Brian Brazil and Paul O'Malley
OS family: GNU/Linux
Source model: Free Software
Latest stable release: 1.1 / January 22, 2007
Update method: APT
Package manager: dpkg
Supported platforms: i386
Kernel type: Monolithic kernel
Default user interface: GNOME
License: Free software licenses
Working state: Current

gNewSense is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu aiming to provide a distribution consisting entirely of free software. It was designed for users who wish to only use free software, that is: software that is freely usable, modifiable, and distributable without any license restrictions. It is officially supported by the Free Software Foundation[1] and is one of several completely free software distributions recommended by the organization. Version 1.1 was released on January 22, 2007.

Despite being based on Ubuntu it has many differences:

  • Non-free firmware removed from the Linux kernel
  • Non-free software repositories are not available - such as Ubuntu's "restricted" and "multiverse" repositories
  • Non-free documentation and artwork removed
  • The "Universe" package repository is enabled by default
  • Mozilla Firefox is rebranded as BurningDog, to avoid certain trademark issues that stem from modification of the software to remove functionality suggesting non-free plugins.[2] A similar situation motivated the rebranding of of Firefox as Iceweasel in the Gnuzilla and Debian projects.
  • Software development tools (gcc, make etc.) are part of the default installation
  • bsdgames, nethack and GNU Emacs are installed by default
  • build-essential installed by default

gNewSense is available only for the Intel 386 platform, is as of version 1.0 (DeltaD) based on the Dapper/6.06 LTS release of Ubuntu,[3] and as with other Ubuntu distributions is installed from a LiveCD. The removal of non-free firmware from the kernel means that some devices such as certain wifi cards will not work as there are no Free Software alternatives available.

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