I totally understand why Purism can’t and shouldn’t have instructions in its official documentation about how to install proprietary software, but there needs to be a place where people can find this info. What I see is that a lot of people are trying to install PureOS and not being able to figure out how to do it, so they give up, and go install Mint or some other distro.
My personal feeling is that Purism loses everytime someone can’t install PureOS on their machine, because that person would have used a system that was 99.9% free (except for some proprietary firmware/drivers). Explaining how to install the proprietary bit makes that person aware exactly what is proprietary in her system, so she is more likely to make sure that her next PC purchase will be able to run on 100% free software, and a Librem 14/15/Mini is likely to be top on her list.
Over the last month, PureOS has been number 51 on DistroWatch’s Page Hit Ranking whereas Pop_OS! has been number 3. I want PureOS to be ranked much higher, because it is the top rated distro that is endorsed by the FSF and I want people to take the FSF’s message seriously.
I used to maintain a MediaWiki installation for the open source company where I previously worked. I don’t know that it was any harder to maintain than other wiki software, but MediaWiki has a cumbersome format for wiki writers. In MediaWiki, you have to write '''''text''''' to put something in bold and italics, which always seemed odd to me.
I personally like Markdown’s format much better, which is why GitLab’s wiki is nice. What I don’t like about GitLab’s wiki is that you have to edit the entire page and can’t just edit a section of the page.
The advantage of MediaWiki is that it makes it really easy to revert the changes made by spammers. The spammers have created automated scripts to attack any MediaWiki installation. I was never able to stop the spammers with CAPTCHAs, so I ended up manually approving all new users who registered to be able to edit the wiki. I don’t know if the situation is any better with the other wiki software.
Please re-read the already provided link above carefully:
“Debian is the only common non-endorsed distribution to keep nonfree blobs out of its main distribution. However, the problem partly remains. …”
So, even recommendation to use “USB stick that was formatted with a FAT filesystem” might lead to wrong impression if someone is watching from “above” what are you doing with PureOS after installing it on “other” laptop HW (who knows/cares).
And, for example, kind of basic recommendation from my side was to always keep /PureOS main repository as one and only “main” within sources.list but even that one was often misunderstood (by adding just non-free neighboring Debian repo needed for the particular firmware installation, which might be disabled afterwards anyway). Please check this post pointing to typical wrong way of usage (that needs to be avoided):
Simple poll, does the Community want us to setup a new wiki that allows for external contributions?
Yes
No
Don’t care
0voters
At the beginning we plan on requiring a login to alleviate spammers but it should have an easier workflow than our current Gitlab Wiki that @amosbatto (and many others) have been amazing enough to tackle.
Is there a way we can make the GitLab wiki easier?
When people create an account they automatically get access to the wiki (populated in their projects section), or when they request, it is automatically granted?
Having a barrier is good, but time is not a good barrier. Having one location would be easier for the staff, and contributors should feel more confident in transferring their new wiki skills to other areas of GitLab to contribute.
You have to ask for access with the current wiki - see the Contribute page for details. As long as it’s fairly obvious that the person requesting access is not a spammer, it should be fairly straightforward to get access.
Other wiki solutions are easier to maintain and administrate, however, which is partly why we’re having this discussion.
This would definitely be helpful and would show your commitment to the community. However if it negatively affects the recommendation by the FSF, you should not do it.
