Is there a libre version of Gentoo?
Don't get me wrong here, I think Trisquel is an awesome project, but ... ;)
I'm starting to dislike the idea in general of relying on repositories of pre-compiled binary packages that have to be maintained and kept up-to-date manually. It seems very labour-intensive for the maintainers and if the maintenance of your particular distro stops, your system can quickly become out-of-date.
I really like the Gentoo model of downloading and compiling everything from source, so that (in theory, at least) everything is always up-to-date and well-optimized. However, one of the things that turned me off of Gentoo is that it's not recognized as 'libre' by the FSF.
I'm just wondering if anyone has made a version of Gentoo that is libre? If not, would it be possible, in theory, to make a Gentoo build that is libre, as long as you 'know what you're doing' (e.g. use the linux-libre kernel and only pick libre packages from their package list)?
The best you can do is define the ACCEPT_LICENSE variable to "-* @FSF-APPROVED @FSF-APPROVED-OTHER". See https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/License_Groups
Also, add the "deblob" flag to the USE variable: https://packages.gentoo.org/useflags/deblob
However, even with those settings, the situation is not perfect: programs that raise subtle issues, such as those listed at http://libreplanet.org/wiki/List_of_software_that_does_not_respect_the_Free_System_Distribution_Guidelines would still be installed unaltered.
Ututo is the way if you want a libre gentoo ;)
http://www.ututo.org/
I am a member!
According to DistroWatch http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=ututo , Ututo is not based on Gentoo anymore, from 2017 it's based on Ubuntu.
Yes, I saw Ututo mentioned on the FSF list of approved distros, but this is what I found when I looked into it as well. So, it seems like there is really no libre version of Gentoo right now?
Again, Gentoo can be configured to be libre: https://trisquel.info/forum/there-libre-version-gentoo#comment-120677
The subtle issues I was referring to do exist. But to fix them, you would need the ebuilds to apply fixes that are analog to Trisquel's package helpers: you are back to "labor-intensive maintenance" (quoting your post).
Ok, thanks for your advice Magic Banana. Although, it looks like a lot of the non-free packages on that list could be avoided, e.g. by using Icecat instead of Firefox and LibreOffice instead of OpenOffice.
Sure. But that is manual work on the user side, which is unnecessary if you use a distribution listed on https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html (whose maintainers search and fix the subtle freedom issues): despite the configuration I mentioned, 'emerge' will let you install Firefox or OpenOffice.org without a warning because their licenses are in @FSF-APPROVED. Also, Icecat is not in Portage.
You could try GuixSD, which uses the GNU Guix package manager:
.
It's like Gentoo in the sense that, at least when I installed it, the
binary substitutes/pre-builts were disabled by default, so in practice
you would only download the package recipes, but your computer will need
to build each package by following the original recipes, or the recipes
that you changed.
Personally, my computer is somewhat old, so I can't build everything
from source, so I opted in for the substitutes.
name at domain writes:
> Don't get me wrong here, I think Trisquel is an awesome project, but ... ;)
>
> I'm starting to dislike the idea in general of relying on repositories
> of pre-compiled binary packages that have to be maintained and kept
> up-to-date manually. It seems very labour-intensive for the
> maintainers and if the maintenance of your particular distro stops,
> your system can quickly become out-of-date.
>
> I really like the Gentoo model of downloading and compiling everything
> from source, so that (in theory, at least) everything is always
> up-to-date and well-optimized. However, one of the things that turned
> me off of Gentoo is that it's not recognized as 'libre' by the FSF.
>
> I'm just wondering if anyone has made a version of Gentoo that is
> libre? If not, would it be possible, in theory, to make a Gentoo build
> that is libre, as long as you 'know what you're doing' (e.g. use the
> linux-libre kernel and only pick libre packages from their package
> list)?
>
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