What can Universal Blue offer in the way of easy to navigate commercial solutions with an OS?
Greetings everyone! I am hoping to find more information here, otherwise I will have to go back to Windows 11 as the only viable commercial solution.
I have developed a computer system that I aim to sell, that uses refurbished e-waste to make more affordable computers for low to medium income households in my country. However, in order to bring the cost down further - I was hoping to use a Linux based operating system, obviously becasue it was 'Open Source'. I eventually stumbled across Bazzite, and was absolutely delighted. However, someone has pointed out to me recently, that despite Linux being open source, Bazzite supposedly has components that will require a license to be obtained, is this correct? @Kyle Gospo points out in this article here: https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/is-it-legal-to-sell-a-prebuilt-with-bazzite-installed/1799/4 - regarding Bazzite can be distributed on pre-built machines, however it sounds like I will run into issues with: Valve, Nvidia and h264 licensing. Is there any way I can get around this?
Steam/Valve: I understand that Bazzite has a lot of main foundations built around SteamOS - would Universal Blues' Aurora OS be better suited, encouraging customers to download the steam client themselves upon purchase?
Nvidia: Can we avoid this Nvidia Driver issue by not providing any Nvidia Graphics Cards in our systems, and only AMD?
h246: Where does this h246 component actually come into Bazzite and Aurora OS? At what point is it installed on a pre-built system if Bazzite or Aurora OS is installed? Can one of universal blues OS's be configured as an option to not install any licensee components in order to be easier to commercially distribute? Someone told me customers would just need to install RPMFfusion after purchasing the device, install steam steam on their device, and provided they are using AMD components only - there should be no issues? The concern is supposedly the legal issues, regarding how to inform customers to download the codecs, is there a way this process could be automated for them, but also allow for them to agree to terms - which is the issue with full-automation, not allowing customers to agree to terms.
If we could allow this thread to be a space to explain in greater details the oppurtunities of using your OS's commercially and what to be aware of, that would be an immensely helpful resource, as there is really not much discussion of this that I could find happening online regarding any linux distro. Universal Blue could be in a really great space to lead in this space with new devices hitting the consumer market that do not have Windows.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. This community is wonderful, and I'm sure I will find a solution thanks to these equally as awesome members!
Universal Blue
Is it legal to sell a prebuilt with bazzite installed?
i was thinking make a custom case and give end users bazzite preinstalled.
4 Replies
this is not legal advice, and i seriously doubt anyone here would offer any, you’re better off hiring a lawyer to counsel you properly. I want to point out that Ubuntu is offered by some vendors as an OEM. Ubuntu as part of its first time setup prompts the user if they wish to obtain third party software and codecs. I am not sure if this includes downloading h.264, it might. Ubuntu is owned by canonical, an enterprise similar to Redhat. They may be paying a license to be able to distribute codecs legally, or they may just have an agreement. For Redhat, they have epel repository for proprietary third party software. The same may apply here.
You could just look into distributing your machines with Fedora-Silverblue, or customizing it to include additional software that can help endusers rebase to bazzite. Again, the legality of this is unclear to me, this is not legal advice, go talk to a lawyer.
That prompt includes h264 last time i used ubuntu
currently all OEMs we work with ship prebuilts with windows that include nvidia drivers and steam
and i am sure they havent asked valve
they also ship epic games
and i think that the key is that the ISO doesn’t package the codecs and they have to be downloaded manually but only after the user opts in. Would have to dig in deep to any license agreements to figure out how they can get away with that.