GNewSense
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is gNewSense. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
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.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.fsf.org/news/gnewsense
- ^ http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/PressRelease20070122
- ^ Document describing the 1.0 release dated 03 November 2006, accessed 22 February 2007