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GNU is Not Unix Open Source Linux News

Trisquel 6.0 'Toutatis' Is Now Available 109

Posted by Soulskill from the celtic-deity-increment dept.
New submitter ikhider writes "Trisquel, a 'libre' version of Ubuntu GNU/Linux, is now available for download and install (or update for those who already have it). It's one of the easiest 'libre' versions of Gnu/Linux to install and run. This version includes: Linux-Libre 3.2, Xorg, Abrowser 19 (a Firefox derivative that does not recommend non-free software), GNOME 3.4, and LibreOffice 3.5. They're also simplifying their release schedule: 'This release is a Long Term Support one, meaning that bugfix and security updates will be published until 2017. Along with this we have decided to change our release schedule from this point on: we will no longer publish short term support versions every 6 months, but focus on giving the best possible support to the LTS release, providing backported improvements to core packages like the kernel, the browser and the xorg server among others.'"
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Trisquel 6.0 'Toutatis' Is Now Available More

Trisquel 6.0 'Toutatis' Is Now Available

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  • almost! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @11:11PM (#43155887)

    just about filled out my FOSS bullshit bingo card on this sumary.

    if you complete a row, you shout:

    FIRST POST!

  • Why not just base it off Debian? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sheehaje ( 240093 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @11:12PM (#43155895)

    I don't get all the Ubuntu spin-offs. Canonical is obviously going far, far away from what these spinoffs are doing - why not just use Debian as the base distribution instead of Ubuntu, which is based on Debian itself?

    • You get the benfit of most of the work done by the Ubuntu project.

    • Re:Why not just base it off Debian? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by afgam28 ( 48611 ) on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @11:30PM (#43156003)

      Because, despite things like Unity, Canonical actually does a lot of good work to fix up a lot of little problems in Debian. It's simply easier for Trisquel and others to rip out Unity than it is to fix up sid.

      • What are these problems with Debian?

        • What are these problems with Debian?

          My opinions (which may be wrong):

          • Debian unstable (sid) - up-to-date, but unstable
          • Debian testing (wheezy) - more stable, but not fully so. Not so up-to-date
          • Debian stable (squeeze) - rock solid stable, but usually very much out of date

          Compare this with Ubuntu - based on Debian unstable - which is both up-to-date and stable

          • Tht sounds like you just pulled the version info from Debian's website. I've run sid as a desktop OS before, and rarely had issues.
            Very occasionally, a library update would break an application for a couple of days until the application was updated for the new lib, but even that was never more than a couple of days, and always an unessential application.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by robsku ( 1381635 )

            My opinions (which may be wrong):

            • Debian stable (squeeze) - rock solid stable, but usually very much out of date

            Compare this with Ubuntu - based on Debian unstable - which is both up-to-date and stable

            Heard or Debian Backports (3rd party repository)?

          • Re:Why not just base it off Debian? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by kthreadd ( 1558445 ) on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @03:11AM (#43156953)

            Debian stable is very much up to date, don't confuse it with having the latest version.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            Now consider how many people still run Windows XP. Why would "out-of-date" be a big deal with Debian?

          • Re:Why not just base it off Debian? (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Rysc ( 136391 ) * <sorpigal@gmail.com> on Wednesday March 13, 2013 @06:14AM (#43157551) Homepage Journal

            Compare this with Ubuntu - based on Debian unstable - which is both up-to-date and stable

            Hah. I'll contain my laughter.

            Canonical releases are rarely what I would call *stable*. They're full of issues both small and large and mixing packages from outside of their main repo can quickly destabilize what you do have.

            Debian sid sometimes has *package dependency issues* or regressions, but that's where its "unstable" moniker stops applying. Debian policy leads to Debian stability and which archive you pull from doesn't matter much. To get something that might be broken in Debian, other than install-time difficulty due to mismatched dependency information, you usually need to go to experimental. If you're not familiar with it that's *good*, because it's not for you.

            Ubuntu is poorly put together and less reliable than Debian. Anyone who's familiar with Debian from a sysadmin point of view will probably be able to confirm this for you. The only reasons Ubuntu gets away with it are (1) its users don't do much with their computers, and (2) after 6 months you dist-upgrade, so problems from the last release go away and get replaced by problems from the new release. It's all terribly slipshod and amateurish.

            • You seem to be confusing the LTS with six month releases for Ubuntu.

              The Long Term Support releases are every other year, usually in April, and are supported with security updated for 5 years on the server, and 3 years on the desktop.

              The six month releases are the unstable ones, but the LTS are very stable.

              Been using them for many years and yes, I sysadmin several systems, both servers and desktops (KDE though), and things are good.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Rysc ( 136391 ) *

                I'm not confusing them, I'm well aware. Lots of normal people keep rolling with the 6 month releases for freshness and run afoul of all manner of problems. The LTS users get the moderately tested and bugfixed version, but it's no better engineered.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by kbahey ( 102895 )

                  Is that Ubuntu's problem that people just upgrade? Perhaps they should default to LTS and require people to override it explicitly. File a bug for that.

                  Not sure whether it is better engineered or whatever. But it is certainly more stable from experience, and spaces out any issues the upgrade causes by years rather than months.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by rdnetto ( 955205 )

            Debian unstable (sid) - up-to-date, but unstable

            Sid isn't as up-to-date as the name suggests.
            My biggest issue with Debian is that it's only a cyclical rolling release, not a true one. When the feature freeze comes 'round, it affects sid as well as testing. Keep in mind that the freeze lasts for 6+ months (the current one has been 8 so far - http://wiki.debian.org/DebianWheezy [debian.org]), and happens once every 2 years; at least 25% of the life cycle is spent in freeze. This is equivalent to being stuck on the previous release of Ubuntu. e.g. I'm still using KDE 4.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Hatta ( 162192 )

        a lot of little problems in Debian.

        Such as?

    • Is Trisquel something that was just forked out of Ubuntu at some point, and has since then been following its own course ever since, or is it something that resyncs w/ Ubuntu every time a new version is out?

      Once Debian completes their HURD, Trisquel could come out w/ their own HURD distro, couldn't they?

      • Trisquel re-syncs with Ubuntu, using scripts to remove all the proprietary parts. Read about it here: How Trisquel Is Made [trisquel.info].

        There probably isn't really any reason to use Hurd, since Linux-libre is completely free anyway. But who knows, maybe Trisquel will change in the future...

        • Yeah, but they can't update its license to GPL3. With Hurd, they could - once Debian completes their Hurd port.
      • I thought HURD itself is not in a state where the GNU developers recommend it for production use. That puts a GNU/Hurd release from Debian a ways off, doesn't it?

    • In hardware hacking circles it is often joked about that an Arduino is included for blog credit. I think with Linux Ubuntu is included for blog credit.

  • Sounds like good news for switchers from Ubuntu. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @11:27PM (#43155979)

    Does anybody know how well the Linux Steam client runs on this?

    • Steam? I thought installing non-free software such as games [pineight.com] defeated the purpose of using Trisquel over, say, Xubuntu.

      • It's still a good question. It won't recommend non-free software, but the question is if it actively prevents non-free software from running.

        • Trisquel doesn't stop proprietary software from running. You can set it to use PPAs or the Ubuntu repositories if you want.

          However, they don't exactly support or recommend doing that. The Trisquel package repos are only supposed to contain free software as well.

        • I think that Linux-Libre removes support for binary-blob drivers, so good luck getting any gaming video card to display a steam game well.

          • In Linux-land "blob" normally refers to proprietary firmware.

            When it comes to 3D support, Intel and nouveau provide free drivers and firmware for many cards. AMD/ATI users are often out of luck though. I believe nouveau in Linux 3.8 brings 3D support to even more NVIDIA users than previously.

            When it comes to firmware, the main area which Linux-libre lacks support in is for wireless cards. But luckily compatible wireless cards come cheap these days, in both PCI-e and USB forms. I recently bought an Atheros c

            • My definition of "gaming card" is a high performance card from ATI or nvidia and I've never been able to get decent performance out of anything but the nvidia blob driver.

              It really seems silly to me to sacrifice performance and usability of your system just so you can say it's 100% free software... But that's just, you know, my opinion man.

          • Why is everyone calling Linux "Libre" all of a sudden? it has always been free, and will remain so. As for supporting binary blobs, they work as one would expect. All you'll see (if you're paying attention) is a whine about it tainting the kernel.

    • no your average Ubuntu user will not move to trisquel, trisquels philosophy is diametrically opposed to what steam stands for. ubuntu users will either go to mint Debian or maybe fedora.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Rhaban ( 987410 )

        Steam doesn't work on mint debian. It requires glibc 2.15, and lmde only has glibc 2.13.

        It's always possible to install a more recetn version, but it's easier to just use a more up-to-date distrib.

      • The average Ubuntu user won't go to another GNU/Linux distribution. They're more likely to move on to another OS altogether, maybe another Unix-like system like the Mac or even Chrome OS if their needs don't go beyond Twitter and Facebook. An Android system would also be attractive since it supposedly also runs Linux. I've just been to a local store (southeast Asia) where they're actually selling an Android 4.0 netbook by some no-name Chinese manufacturer. So full circle even if in a small way for Google's

      • The average Ubuntu user won't go to another GNU/Linux distribution. They're more likely to move on to another OS altogether, maybe another Unix-like system like the Mac or even Chrome OS if their needs don't go beyond Twitter and Facebook. An Android system would also be attractive since it supposedly also runs Linux. I've just been to a local store (southeast Asia) where they're actually selling an Android 4.0 netbook by some no-name Chinese manufacturer. So full circle even if in a small way for Google's
        • I think that's a stretch. I'm a dissatisfied Ubuntu user and right now I am switching back and forth between my Aptosid and Fedora partitions as alternatives.

          • I'm a dissatisfied Ubuntu user

            Well, you're obviously more patient than I am. ;-)

            I've been primarily a Slackware user since the mid-'90s (though until recently I ran Arch on my laptop), but occasionally I pull down a current version of Ubuntu just to see what I'm missing. However, I always find Ubuntu annoys me to the point that I end up blowing it away after a couple of hours.

    • Re:Sounds like good news for switchers from Ubuntu (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 12, 2013 @11:41PM (#43156059)

      I'm pretty sure if you install Steam on this distro, RMS will be summoned to your house to punch your fucking mouth loose. Be warned.

    • Does anybody know how well the Linux Steam client runs on this?

      Unless they really ripped things up more than expected(or Steam demands a bunch of proprietary libraries, rather than just blobbing them in), I'd assume that it would run more or less entirely the same.

      The only significant caveat, of course, is that games tend to be hard on the GPU, and FOSS GPU driver performance can be a bit... touchy. Intel GMAs work about as well as they ever do with free drivers(does Intel even bother to maintain a proprietary branch on linux?); but just aren't that fast. AMD GPU perfo

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by robsku ( 1381635 )

        The link recommends bull... nv is much better than Vesa, though doesn't offer 3D acceleration / DRI, it offers much more 2D optimization, which Vesa offers none. Nowdays there is also Nouveau, which is FOSS nvidia driver with 3D acceleration, though it's features are only fraction of those NVidia has and their drivers provide. So the best options are from best to worst:
        1. nvidia official binary blob
        2. Nouveau
        3. nv
        4 vesa

  • Trisquel doesn't make sense to me (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The purpose of this distro is for FOSS fans. They want something completely free. So they base the distro off of Ubuntu one of the least Libre of all the distros out there. Canonical, especially lately, has been moving away from GNU/Linux and moving towards Ubuntu/Linux. They really have been suffering from NIH(Not Invented Here) syndrome and have been working against the rest of the community. Especially with Mir, which is causing a lot of unnecessary and harmful fragmentation. If you want to make a free l

    • I posted this, I didn't mean to post as Anonymous, I was on another computer and thought I was already logged in.

    • Nobody is expected to use it. I did a shift at the FSF stand on free software day a few years back. I gave out a lot of Trisquel CDs but for every disk I handed out I suggested the recipient walk around to the Ubuntu stand and get a disk from them as well.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      They really have been suffering from NIH(Not Invented Here) syndrome and have been working against the rest of the community. Especially with Mir, which is causing a lot of unnecessary and harmful fragmentation.

      These two sentences does not make sense. You claim canonical does not invent anything and then you support it by naming Mir which is an invention came from Canonical. Whatever canonical does peoples like you will bash. I'm so sorry for you.

      I remember how redhat dumped the whole Linux desktop back in 2000 or something, because they didn't believe in desktop and thought they have to spend their money on servers and then they introduced fedora which is always UNSTABLE, BUGGY and NEVER ON TIME for releases.

      I al

    • The purpose of this distro is for FOSS fans. They want something completely free.

      Not FOSS fans, just the FSF, or the 'Libre-Linux' crowd. The few purists who think that liberated software is an end in itself, regardless of the quality compromises that have to be made in order to attain it. The handful who thinks that having binary blobs of things whose source code is not readily available for free distribution is contaminating software.

      So they base the distro off of Ubuntu one of the least Libre of all the distros out there. Canonical, especially lately, has been moving away from GNU/Linux and moving towards Ubuntu/Linux.

      Why should Canonical stay w/ GNU, when the FSF, for starters, had long excluded Canonical from their list of endorsed distros (see the GNU website)? B

    • Just out of curiosity, what makes Mir / upstart / pulseaudio / all the other "Ubuntu" bits less FOSS than the standard Linux ones? Is there a council that decides which bits are properly FOSS approved?

  • From the website:
    "Trisquel was born in the Galicia region of Spain, so the primary language was Galician, and Castilian and English were also included. In version 2.0, Catalan and Basque were added".

    Galician, Castilian, Catalan, Basque... No wonder a fork from a fork is coming out of a country where they have so many different sub-languages. Those people can't even get along with other Spaniards. Even money that Trisquel itself will fork before the rooster crows.

  • FYI (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Toutatis was a god of the Gaules.

  • WTF does libre mean in this context? Or are we talking about Mexican wrestlers again?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zoward ( 188110 )

      WTF does libre mean in this context? Or are we talking about Mexican wrestlers again?

      The term Libre is used by many in the FOSS community instead of "free", so they won't have to keep explaining the diference between "free as in speech" (free to use and modify) and "free as in beer" (cost).

      They're downstream from Ubuntu instead of Debian because Ubuntu is more end user-friendly than Debian. I would imagine that could change depending on how Ubuntu changes over the next few releases.

      I'll be downloading Toutatis today. Along with my main (gaming) rig (which runs Linux Mint), I maintain a "fr

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by robsku ( 1381635 )

        I have to say, it's become a lot easier than it was in the old days, where almost nothing worked after you stripped out the nonfree bits. Modems and network cards were notoriously hard to get working.

        How old days was this? I know it was hard before, but when I got into Linux (Red Hat 7.1) I still had to hand hunt RPM's to install dependencies, but network cards and even most of time video cards (I never got my old P200MMX with Hercules Stingray 128 3D to work with X but with nvidia I had the choice between nv and proprietary drivers) worked fine out of box - even so that moving my install HD to another computer usually didn't need any other changes than possibly changing the video driver name in XFree c

    • Previously, the FSF and Stallman used to use the term 'free software', which was pretty misleading, since the first thing that one would think of hearing it would be price. This led to their long winded 'free-as-in-freedom-but-not-as-in-beer' explanations. So more recently, they've substituted the word 'free' w/ 'libre' so that people wouldn't have that confusion.

      I do think it's an improvement, but I'd have preferred them using the term 'Liberated Software' instead of 'Libre', so that anyone who knows E

  • Mir (Score:1)

    by ls671 ( 1122017 )

    Do plan to backport Mir once released? ;-)

  • So if you were tired of running MySQL at level one, now you can dial it down to zero with NoSQL or up to three with TriSQL... oh wait

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