Actually, it's not only a preference on philosophical matters, as much as one of a practical matter: I'm looking for hardware that I can use in other platforms also (e.g., the vanilla Realtek 8139 cards that I have here worked beautifully with Linux on an old PMac box).

Unfortunately, binary-only drivers don't give us this flexibility.

Since I don't play games (and don't need 3D hardware), I'm still eagerly waiting for a review of components that, while not necessarily high-end, work well with open-source only drivers.

Thanks for your insight.