Firmware is not part of the kernel.

I guess they want the documents to be public, but not too public.

Firefox is updated about 1-2 times per year. We're at Firefox 17 right now and in a couple of months Firefox 24 will be released. Only use the glorified snapshots released in the meantime if you want to test what's new before you deploy the upcoming release.

For some it's a huge difference.

The primary difference is that LO is locked into LGPL, while AOO is free software under the Apache license.

/me raises hand

Why is it better?

Well, LO has better marketing. But OO exists and is going on strong.

printf("Hello World!\n");

Convince me where the math is in that.

Not at all if the computer (I don't know why so many call modern hand-held computers phones since they are not very phone-like) is using strong and trustworthy encryption which you control. I don't know the details in this case (Slashdot is seldom trustworthy), but if anyone except you can decrypt it using something other than brute force then the encryption is certainly not trustworthy. If that's the case then putting secrets on this computer that you call phone is absolutely a terrible idea, but I see very little problem with it if it's actually good encryption.

Actually, no. From what I've seen they are usually doing good work when rolling out updated to older devices. There have been a few that's not been optimal, such as iOS 4 on the 3G. But apart from that one it actually works just fine. There are many problems with iOS, but updates is not one of them.

So true. It's a shame that the original manufacturer won't support a device that came out just two years ago (HTC Desire S came out in 2011 if I'm correct).

It's sad that the open alternative can't support it.

In the meantime, the latest version of Apple iOS supports iPhones released back into 2009 with iPhone 3GS. If you bought the latest iPhone available in 2009, you would still get the latest OS today almost four years later.

I *really* hope that the phone manufacturers will just drop the idea that everything that's not an x86 has to be specialized locked down hardware. It's a computer, start treating it like one.

Of course it doesn't have to be different, but some might say that it's a bit wasteful to build a separate distribution when you're doing so few changes, changes that could instead be integrated in Debian itself or provided as a separate repository.

Debian doesn't have defaults. If you don't like Gnome then just install Openbox instead.

So basically you could just install Debian, install openbox and pull down their configuration and you would end up with Crunchbang? I agree if it's that simple. Why not instead spend the effort on improving the experience with Debian? Is it really necessary to have a separate distribution just because of that?

Because the legal system that we have created is designed to let companies like Microsoft do exactly what they are doing. This is completely normal.