mas.to is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
Hello! mas.to is a fast, up-to-date and fun Mastodon server.

Administered by:

Server stats:

12K
active users

Leah Rowe is not a Rowebot

A user posted this on IRC the other day: youtube.com/watch?v=BWq6XnWKQn

And this leaves me with a dilemma. As a free software advocate, I do not want people using Windows. As an engineer, I want to provide accurate information. My things are Linux and BSD. I last tested this many years ago and was very happy that Windows did *not* boot.

I could gloss/fudge over it and not mention it. Or mention it and say not to use it (because it's non-free). In any case, mentioning it means promoting it.

Thoughts?

I have listened to the advice of people here, and to the results of the poll; in addition, I also consulted other people in the Libreboot project. I have decided to document it. This patch adds it to Frequently Asked Questions:

codeberg.org/libreboot/lbwww/c

I feel like putting it on the FAQ will prevent it from being overly promoted, and where it is written, I strongly advise against using it.

Here is the actual link, added by the patch:

libreboot.org/faq.html#windows

Patch titled "dubious mention".

Codeberg.orgdubious mention · 4fb82aba55 Signed-off-by: Leah Rowe <leah@libreboot.org>

@libreleah

dont document it unless its necessary for moving away from windows.

OR:

same, but with rare exceptions that continue to be rare exceptions and dont just give up on the idea.

@libreleah I'm not sure that there's an equivalence between mentioning and promoting, or even endorsing. The news mentions many things - it's not promoting them, just stating facts.

Ultimately as it's your project you should feel free to do what you want.

Stating your software works with one of the most well known OS' might help people feel confident about the quality & compatibility of what you're offering them.

And it's probably unhelpful to users to gloss over that fact.

@adiz @libreleah Agreed. But maybe new customers might be interested if they knew the software (unofficially) worked with it 🙂 I don't know!

@libreleah
To be fair, Windows 10 is what they managed to run, not 11, and 10 will be discontinued at the end of the year. (And by not being free software, Windows 10 will be very difficult to keep secure after that point, whereas theoretically even outdated free software may be patchable somehow, at least a lot more easily than anything proprietary).

@libreleah Document, but make it very clear that it's not officially supported and that you will not assist should any problems arise.

That's basically how nvidia proprietary drivers are handled in the wlroots ecosystem.

@libreleah I think it's better to document it then leave people with a bad experience following some half put together guide. In the end you'll be blamed for it but at least if you document it then you can say they didn't follow the guide properly

@libreleah I literally don't care about what Windows can or can't. To me it's just a tool I (am forced to) use at work. I know exactly as much I need to do my job with it.

Mention it if it does not take away time from more interesting or useful things, or don't mention it.

@libreleah it's about freedom (even to do things that are stupid...). I detest windows, but wouldn't stop other people from using it (as long as I don't have to support it).

I'm glad that if I really want to blow my foot off I can uninstall my boot loader or 'rm -rf /' works. Just deliver the bullet to my foot in the fastest most efficient means possible.

Paternalistic 'I know better than you and won't let you do things BS' is why I *don't* want to use closed source, IMHO.

@libreleah Just document that windows isn't the target audience and isn't supported or tested, so it may not work and may or may not break horribly in the future if it somehow does work.

That's pretty much the situation, no?

@libreleah
> As a free software advocate, I do not want people using Windows.

I understand you, but messing up with boot process _on purpose_ at the code level isn't good either.

If SeaBIOS on QEMU/KVM can boot Windows, why other Coreboot-based systems shouldn't?

@libreleah I would only consider documenting it if there are serious inquiries about it. At this point it seems more anecdotal that it happens to work.

@libreleah

Strong don't document.

Good documentation serves as invitation; a "why not do this?" message.

Anyone inviting users to start using an OS that EOLs fairly soon and has W11 as upgrade path with convenience in mind is feeding the MS userbase.

No dilemma. There's 100 different things that can be abused to open a beer bottle and the manufacturers of them don't demonstrate any of them as features.

Middleground between user-privacy-hostile and user-centric-design is an idiot's myth.