*countable infinities only

[Jay Sulzberger]

On Mon, 18 Jun 2012, Gerald Henriksen <ghenriks at gmail.com> wrote:

> > On Sun, 17 Jun 2012 23:21:14 -0400 (EDT), you wrote:
> 
> >
> >
> >On Mon, 18 Jun 2012, Matthew Garrett <mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org> wrote:
> >
> >> > On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 07:54:17PM -0400, Seth Johnson wrote:
> >> > On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 7:26 PM, Reindl Harald <h.reindl at thelounge.net> wrote:
> >> > >
> >> > >
> >> > > Am 17.06.2012 01:14, schrieb Chris Murphy:
> >> > >> Please provide an example of a better option, with sufficient detail as to constitute a successful relay of the baton.
> >> > >> The point of the thread from the outset was to explore alternatives, but so far those alternatives are vaporware.
> >> > 
> >> > 
> >> > Numerous non-vaporware recommendations follow, snipped directly from the thread:
> >> 
> >> (snip)
> >> 
> >> These suggestions boil down to:
> >> 
> >> 1) Do nothing
> >> 2) Become a hardware vendor
> >> 3) Use a Fedora key
> >> 
> >> None of these solve the problem of getting Fedora onto arbitrary x86 
> >> hardware bought towards the end of this year.
> >> 
> >> -- 
> >> Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org
> >
> >I think 50 million dollars toward buying, and properly arranging
> >the UEFI, of several lots of x86 computers would indeed solve
> >part of the problem you point out.
> >
> >Why not?
> 
> Intel just launched their Ivy Bridge processors, which has resulted in
> likely more than 200 different products being released (combined
> motherboards and systems from vendors like Dell).
> 
> Then add all the other older Intel processors that will be used in
> Windows 8 certified hardware.
> 
> Don't forgot to add in products based on AMD processors.
> 
> Now factor in the customizations that can be done to many of those
> products, and you can quickly see that there is no way Red Hat can
> hope to offer hardware that would make every Linux user happy.

This is not the issue.  You have postulated that we must solve a
problem we need not solve.

> 
> Not to mention that you are effectively telling anyone not currently
> using "Red Hat Hardware" that they can't run Linux, thus eliminating
> the ability to gain new Linux users.

You have committed a sign error in your argument.

Because there are 200 different products being released,
certainly Red Hat can get another motherboard made.  It would
just be the 201st such motherboard.

Further, this is in answer to just another aspect of the same
sign error: We do not have to solve any such problem as you pose.
One superior motherboard would be of great help to Fedora, Red
Hat, and the free sofwtare movement.  It is hard today I think to
get Fedora running on some PowerPC systems, on some MIPS systems
too, and likely very hard on old VAX machines.  So what?

We do not have to have every motherboard work well with free
software.  But we do need at least one, and we hope many.

oo--JS.


PS. The same sign error, here appearing as a confusion between
"at least one" and "all", appears elsewhere in this discussion.
I hope to get something out on this.