Trisquel 3.5 Awen release notes

The 3.5.x STS version, codenamed Awen and based on Ubuntu Karmic, was released on March 22, 2010.

As an STS (short term support) version, Awen will be supported for one year after release.

One interesting update included in this release is the new disk layout, using Ext4 for the system partition, including the boot directory for faster booting, and XFS for the home directory to lower memory consumption and avoid tedious Ext4 memory checks for large partitions. We also followed our upstream by moving to Grub 2 and Upstart, for a more flexible boot manager and a faster system initialization.

Software versions and distro editions

• Linux-libre 2.6.31
• GNOME 2.28
• OpenOffice.org 3.1.1
• Trisquel Web Browser 3.5.7
• Gimp 2.6.8
• Xorg 7.4

The media center Moovida, previously called Elisa, is a very cool manager for video, audio, images and internet media resources. We removed the Audacious player because the new version has fewer translations and its functionality is covered by Rhythmbox. We also added an ogg/ogv encoder.

Support is included for the following languages:

• English (default and with extras and writing tools ^[1])
• Spanish (extras and writing tools)
• Basque
• Catalonian
• Chinese (with input tools)
• French
• Galician
• Hindi (with input tools)
• Portuguese

1: The extras include the OpenOffice.org help and spellcheckers. Chinese and Hindi iBus input methods and tools are also included.

There is support for both 32 and 64-bit architectures.

Trisquel Gamer

Hello.

I'm pleased to announce the release of Trisquel-Gamer 3.5: a LiveDVD full of Free Software games; just boot and play!

The project goal is to provide a LiveDVD full of Free Software games that is playable without the need to install anything. Also, Trisquel Gamer allows saving game data and settings automatically in a USB flash drive: Just connect a USB flash drive after booting the DVD and it will save your data in it. No additional configuration is required.

Trisquel Gamer is completely free software and the LiveDVD will only contain free software games with free media licenses. There is a list of the 55 games included in the LiveDVD.

All the games included in Trisquel Gamer have an article at Libre Game Wiki and Free Gamer. So if you are a fan of those sites you will probably recognize all the games included.

Trisquel Gamer 3.5 is now available here. There are also pages for the list of changes and the system requirements.

If you are familiar with GNU/Linux distributions on a LiveDVD, I'm pretty sure there will be no problem figuring Trisquel Gamer 3.5 out.

I hope you find it enjoyable.

Regards,

David Zaragoza

 * Updated the game list, now with 50 games, this is the final list for the next release.
 * The graphical interface for the 'Insert an USB flash drive' message is done.
 * Working on the application's menu.

Trisquel Edu

Trisquel Edu is a fully free operating system designed for all kinds of educational centers, from primary schools to universities. It is built on the LTS branch of Trisquel, and includes a set of educational packages and classroom management tools.

Educational packages

The default installation comes with the GNOME desktop and very few user applications, making it easier for the teacher to have the exact set of programs needed for the students. The programs can be easily installed using a graphical application that includes the following educational bundles:

• Development
  • Anjuta - C, C++ and Python IDE
  • Eclipse - Java IDE
  • Emacs - Advanced editor
  • Planner - Project resource manager
  • VirtualBox - Hardware virtualization system
  • Gtranslator - App translation tool
  • Compilers and tools for C, C++, Python and Java
  • OpenOffice.org Base - Database management

• Image and design
  • Gimp - Bitmap Image editor
  • Inkscape - Vector image editor
  • Scribus - Publishing tool
  • Dia - All purpose diagram tool
  • Xsane - Scan utility

• Text and HTML
  • Emacs - Advanced editor
  • Screem - HTML editor
  • Scribus - Publishing tool
  • Gobby - Collaborative text editing
  • LyX - Word processor-like frontend for LaTeX

• Science and engineering
  • QCad - Computer aided design
  • Kig and Kmplot - Math graphics
  • Kstars and Stellarium - Astronomy
  • Xaos - Fractal viewer
  • Oregano - Electronic circuit simulator
  • Dia - All purpose diagram tool

• Audio production
  • Ardour - Digital audio workstation
  • Audacity - A fast, cross-platform audio editor
  • Pulseaudio utilities - Fine tune the audio daemon
  • Rosegarden - Music editor and MIDI/audio sequencer

• Activities and games for kids
  • Gcompris and JClic - Educational activities for children
  • Gnome games
  • Kpercentage and Tuxmath, - Math trainers
  • Kanagram - Anagram game
  • Khangman - "Hangman"-like game
  • Gbrainy - A trainer for the brain
  • Blinken - "Simon"-like game
  • Ktouch - Touch typing trainer
  • Kturtle - Logo programming environment
  • Kverbos, Kvoctrain and kwordquiz - Vocabulary builders
  • Ktuberling - Virtual potato
  • Gpaint and Tux Paint - Simple drawing apps

• Networking tools
  • Amule and Transmission - File sharing tools
  • Ekiga - VoIP softphone
  • Pidgin - Instant messenger client
  • Etherape - Network visualization app
  • Firestarter - Firewall

Management tools

The main Management tools included in Trisquel Edu are iTALC and LTSP.

iTALC - Intelligent Teaching And Learning with Computers

LTSP - Linux Terminal Server Project

Easier management: The only computer that needs to be managed is the server. It contains all the users, programs and data files, and the diskless clients have no configuration and thus require no maintenance. The students can start the session from any client. If you install a new program on the server, it is instantly available to every client, and the users do not ever need to restart the session.

Scalability: If you need to connect a large number of clients, a set of servers can be set up to work together. Depending of the kind of applications run, a standard server can be host about 30 to 50 simultaneous clients.

Reusing old computers: You can use any computer from the last 10 years or so as a client, as long as its hardware is supported by GNU/Linux and is capable of booting with PXE.

Low power consumption: Instead of using old computers, you can get fanless and diskless thin clients that are low-heat, silent, inexpensive, easy to maintain, and run with less than 10 watts of power, 1/10th of a standard CPU unit.

Trisquel Mini

This edition, intended for networks, netbooks, and aging computers is still in beta testing.

Link to discussion: http://trisquel.info/en/forum/suggestions-trisquel-mini

List of possible packages: http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/suggestions-trisquel-mini

Trisquel Pro

Trisquel Pro is a 100% free software operating system for business use. Typical usage scenarios include accounting, billing, point-of-sale, office automation, and graphical design. It is built on the LTS branch of Trisquel.

Trisquel Pro comes with most of the packages of the standard Trisquel (excluding the GNOME games suite and Rhythmbox music player) in addition to numerous tools and applications that accommodate all kinds of professional environments.

Professional Packages

This is a list of applications that are specific to the Pro edition:

• Management
  • OpenOffice.org Base - Database management
  • ERP Abanq - Enterprise resource planning
  • Planner - Project resource management

• Finance
  • GNUCash - Accounting
  • OpenBravo POS - Point of Sale

• Document Production
  • LyX - Word processor-like frontend for LaTeX
  • Scribus - Publishing tool

• Graphical Design
  • Inkscape - Vector image editor
  • Dia - All purpose diagram tool

• System Administration
  • Firestarter - Firewall
  • ClamTK Virus Scanner - Virus scanner for Windows partitions
  • Likewise - Joins Active Directory domains
  • Simple Backup - Backup solution

• Virtualization
  • Virtualbox - Hardware virtualization system

How the Netinst Image is Done

The netinst system is a set of initrd and .iso images that can be used to install a Trisquel system by grabbing the needed packages from the network. It can be used as an standalone .iso image, loaded via PXE, or booted from any conventional bootloader. The netinst image is available for the LTS editions, and it is included as an alternative boot menu entry in the LiveCDs.

The netinst or netinstall system is built around the debian-installer set of packages, and the images themselves are built by compiling the debian-installer package. The typical netinst image, in the form of a tiny .iso, consists of a kernel binary and an initrd image. This image is loaded into the system memory and contains the minimal set of tools needed to download the rest of the installer (packaged in udeb files) at runtime. Once downloaded and installed in the minimal ramdisk system, it is able to debootstrap and configure a complete Trisquel system.

A Debian source package usually compiles to a set of udeb packages, which are designed to be used by dpkg and package managers such as apt in standard installations. The debian-installer needs a lighter package system, as it will be run from a minimal system loaded into a ramdisk. Because of this, the source packages that conform the Debian installer set gives us udeb packages upon compiling. Those udeb packages are not listed by apt-cache, as they have their own repository. The source packages for the udeb ones are in the normal repository, though.

To make our netinst image from the Ubuntu upstream source files we need to modify several (but not all) of the debian-installer set of packages, changing references to Ubuntu with the proper Trisquel ones, removing non-free installers, and replacing the repository selector system. This is the list of debian-installer packages we modify:

• apt-setup: It configures the sources.list of the installed system.
• base-installer: Debootstraps a Trisquel system from a mirror.
• choose-mirror: Lists all the official Trisquel archive mirrors.
• debian-installer: The main package, it builds the install images. The boot logo, GPG key and several text chains are replaced.
• grub-installer: Installs the bootloader.
• main-menu: The installer main-menu. References to Ubuntu are replaced.
• netcfg: It configures the network and sets the system name. The name is changed from Ubuntu to Trisquel.
• net-retriever: Downloads the required packages. The GPG signing key is replaced with the Trisquel one.

The repository definitions for the debian-installer set can be found here: http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel/dists/robur/main/debian-installer/

Burn Trisquel CD images

To burn a CD image (like the ISO files of the Trisquel discs) from Windows, you can use the option "burn image" of your CD burning program. If you do not have that kind of software, follow these steps:

1. Download and install Infra Recorder, a free software program to burn CD images.
2. Insert a CD/DVD into the recorder, and select "do nothing" or "cancel" if any auto-boot message appears.
3. Open Infra Recorder, and select Write Image.

1. Select the CD image that you want to burn, for example "Trisquel-3.0-i686.iso", and click on 'Open'.
2. Click on 'Ok'.

Be sure to choose a low burn speed to get error-free burning.

How to Create a LiveUSB

This is a manual for making a LiveUSB with Trisquel installed in order to boot the OS from the flash drive and (if desired) save any changes you make.

1. Download a Trisquel .iso of your choice.
2. Open the USB Startup Disk Creator application (Menu Bar → System → Administration → USB Startup Disk Creator).
3. Insert the USB drive. At minimum, you should have about 1 GB of free space (512 MB for Trisquel Mini).
4. Select an .iso or a CD in your drive to be the source image.
5. Select how much free space on the USB drive you want to reserve for saving changes. If you are making the LiveUSB for regular usage, reserving at least 300 MB of free space is recommended.
6. When you are finished, click "Make Startup Disk" and wait for the process to complete.

Install Trisquel

This installation manual is primarily intended for beginning users, and assumes no prior experience with a GNU/Linux operating system.

Download the CD Image

1. Go here and download an .iso. Trisquel supports only x86 (32-bit) and AMD64 (64-bit) architectures at this time; download the 32-bit version if you wish to be on the safe side.

Burn the .iso

1. The .iso file can be burned to a CD or DVD, or installed onto a USB stick. Refer to this manual for burning to CD or DVD, or this one for burning to a USB drive.

Booting into the LiveCD/DVD/USB

1. Restart your computer.
2. In the first few seconds as the computer boots up, you will see your manufacturer's BIOS splash screen. You must press a key (generally either the ESC, F1, F2, F5, F10, or F12 key) to access a screen that lets you choose to boot from a CD, DVD, or USB drive instead of your hard disk.

1. Do not be concerned about how long it takes to start up, as booting a system from removable media is far slower than booting it from your hard disk. Choose a language and select the first option ("Try Trisquel without any change to your computer") when the menu appears.
2. Now you're booted into the graphical LiveCD environment. You can now try out Trisquel without installing it, and with a USB, you can even save changes. When you are ready to install Trisquel onto your hard disk, click the "Install Trisquel" icon on the desktop or via Menu Bar → System → Administration → Install.

Installation

1. Step 1: Select a language. Click "Forward".
2. Step 2: Select your time zone and a city that most closely matches your location. These settings can be can be changed later. Click "Forward".
3. Step 3: Select your keyboard layout. The default layout is probably best.
4. Step 4: Create a partition for Trisquel to be installed on. You should probably select Ext4, which is an advanced "journaling" file system and currently the state of the art; Ext3 is the previous version of this file system. Ext2 is a legacy version without journaling, so it reads and writes files faster, but is less reliable in the event of a crash or power outage. You should only choose Ext2 if you are comfortable with its technical limitations. XFS is also a good choice, but be aware that XFS partitions cannot be shrunk once they are created.

Additionally, you need to create a separate Linux swap partition. Optimally it is at least one gigabyte, but it is generally wasteful to have more swap space than your amount of RAM.

1. Step 5: Enter your real first and last name, and the name of the computer if you wish. Choose a login name and password. This step is crucial. Be certain that your system password has no chance of ever being guessed by anyone. A genuinely strong password is over 10 characters long and will include a combination of upper and lower-case letters with at least one number. It should include no dictionary words. Fluffy1 or playapimp are weak passwords; WodL73ggmiLhjB (don't use this one!) is a very strong password. This page describes a good method for generating unbreakable, easily remembered passwords.
2. Step 6: ...
3. Step 7: Confirm all of your settings one last time before proceeding with installation. When you are satisfied, click "Install". Installation will take several minutes. When it is finished, you will be prompted to reboot your computer. After this, the installation media (CD, DVD, or USB drive) no longer needs to be inserted.

Post-Installation

1. If another operating system was already installed on your system, you will see a bootloader menu called GRUB. Select Trisquel's entry on the list. If you want to change the background or options of the bootloader menu, it can very easily be done with a program called KGrubEditor.
2. Log in with your username and password.
3. Because Trisquel includes only free software, some hardware devices do not work because they rely on proprietary drivers. The two most common hardware-related issues after installation are lack of 3D acceleration and lack of wireless networking. To resolve those two common issues, refer to this guide for graphics and purchase a wireless networking device from this list. Also, you should refer to this list of known hardware that works with fully free systems.
4. You will likely want to enable DVD playback. The necessary library, libdvdcss2, is left out of the default installation to avoid patent issues. This guide provides instructions to install it in a few seconds.
5. Welcome to Trisquel GNU/Linux!

Full Disk Encryption Install

Introduction

• swap will be encrypted
• root (/) will be encrypted
• boot (/boot) cannot be encrypted but could be on an USB key or non-rewritable CD-ROM (not covered here)

Instructions

• Boot the LiveCD
• Connect to the network using NetworkManager (located on the far-right side of the Panel)
• Open the terminal and become root:

 sudo su

• Install cryptsetup and gparted:

 apt-get update
 apt-get install gparted
 apt-get install cryptsetup

• Launch gparted and partition your hard disk like you would do normally (so create filesystem on the partition etc...) creating unencrypted valid partitions

• Use Wikipedia to find a good block cypher. One example is aes,xts,essiv:256
• Load the modules of the chosen encryption:

 modprobe xts
 modprobe aes_i586
 modprobe sha256

• Format the partition you have chosen for root(/) with cryptsetup:

 cryptsetup -y --cipher aes-xts-essiv:sha256 --key-size 512 luksFormat /dev/PARTITION

• Replace /dev/PARTITION by your partition. It will overwrite all the data in the partition.

• Open the partition (replace /dev/PARTITION as needed):

 cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/PARTITION crypto_root

• Format the partition using the filesystem you want (preferably ext4, or XFS if you don't mind that partitions cannot be shrunk in XFS):

 mkfs.ext3 /dev/mapper/crypto_root

• Launch the Trisquel installer and proceed to step 4, hard disk partitioning
• Select manual partitioning, then select your root (/) partition to be /dev/mapper/crypto_root
• Select your swap and your /boot partitions in the same manner
• Be careful not to recreate the partition table
• Proceed with installation. When it finishes, select to continue trying Trisquel. Do not reboot.
• Mount your root partition and chroot into it:

 mkdir /mnt/root
 mount /dev/mapper/crypto_root /mnt/root
 mount /dev/ /mnt/root/dev -o bind
 chroot /mnt/root mount /proc
 chroot /mnt/root mount /sys
 chroot /mnt/root

• Create the /etc/crypttab replacing /dev/PARTITION as needed:

 echo "root /dev/disk/by-uuid/$(sudo vol_id --uuid /dev/PARTITION) none luks" >> /etc/crypttab

• Add the cypher modules you have chosen before to /etc/modules so they load at boot and get included in the initd:

 echo xts >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
 echo aes_i586 >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
 echo sha256 >> /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

• Install cryptsetup:

 apt-get update
 apt-get install cryptsetup

• Rebuild the initrd:

 mount /boot
 update-initramfs -u

• Exit the chroot and unmount everything:

 exit
 umount /mnt/root/boot
 umount /mnt/root/proc
 umount /mnt/root/dev
 umount /mnt/root/sys

• Finally, reboot Trisquel. You will be asked for your hard disk encryption password.

Backup Files Quickly and Easily

This manual describes one easy solution to backup and restore files on your computer. It is highly configurable and does not require any use of the command line.

Getting the Program

The program you need is SBackup, also called "Simple Backup and Restore". Either open the Add/Remove Applications wizard or Synaptic Package Manager and search for "sbackup", or open the terminal and type:

 sudo apt-get install sbackup

Setting Backup Properties

Click on "Simple Backup Config" from the System Tools section of your Menu Bar.

General

Recommended Backup will perform a daily backup of your /home,system data held in /etc,/usr/local and /var. It will exclude multimedia files and any files over 100MB. By default this backup will be stored /var/backup.
Custom Backup lets you change a backup schedule, backup schedule, included directories/files, and purging schedule yourself.
Manual Backup is a good option if you do not want the program to back up files automatically.

Include

Select which directories and files on your system will be backed up.

Exclude

By default, certain multimedia files (like .ogg, .mp3, and .avi) and any file larger than 100 MB are excluded from backups, to drastically cut down on the time it takes to make backups and the size of backups. Directories listed in the "Paths" and "Regex" sections generally store temporary information that does not need to be backed up.

Destination

You can store backups either in a default directory in /var/backup, in a custom directory, or on an internet backup server. For maximum security, it is best to back up to a removable storage device (external hard drive or USB drive).

Time

Here you set your backup schedule.

Purging

You can enable or disable purging of old and incomplete backups, and choose either a simple cutoff point for old backups or go by a logarithmic schedule.

Backup

When you are satisfied with the settings you have chosen, you can initialize a backup manually at any time by pressing the "Backup Now!" button. Otherwise, the program will only backup when scheduled. The backup process will run as a background daemon until it is finished.

Restoring a Backup

Click on "Simple Backup Restore" from the System Tools section of your Menu Bar. Simply choose a backup file, select a folder or individual file to restore, and press the "Restore" button. Your folders and/or files will be synchronized with the contents of the backup archive.

Configure 2D and 3D Graphics Acceleration

This manual is for the novice user that wants to enable 3D acceleration in Trisquel using free software.

Intel

NVIDIA

ATI

Configure an LTSP Server

This manual shows how to install and configure a thin client server LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project), generally to be used as a classroom environment.

In our example we will use for the server a computer with two Ethernet cards, one connected to the internet and the other to a switch, which will be connected to the thin clients. As a client, you can use any PC or dedicated thin client with a i386 or amd64 processor, if it is capable of booting from PXE.

Installation

Having Trisquel Edu installed and running in our server computer (you can use any Trisquel LTS edition), we open a terminal and install the trisquel-ltsp-server package:

 sudo apt-get install trisquel-ltsp-server

 sudo gedit /etc/default/dhcp3-server

 INTERFACES="eth1"

If we need to change the IP range or any other dhcp configuration, we edit:

 sudo gedit /etc/ltsp/dhcpd.conf

 authoritative;
 
 subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
     range 192.168.0.20 192.168.0.250;
     option domain-name "trisquel.local";
     option subnet-mask 255.255.255.0;
     option root-path "/opt/ltsp/i386";
     if substring( option vendor-class-identifier, 0, 9 ) = "PXEClient" {
         filename "/ltsp/i386/pxelinux.0";
     } else {
         filename "/ltsp/i386/nbi.img";
     }
 }

 DEFAULT vmlinuz ro initrd=initrd.img quiet splash

 sudo /etc/init.d/dhcp3-server restart
 sudo /etc/init.d/openbsd-inetd restart

The next step is creating the image the clientes will load. In our case, and as a recommendation for everyone, we will use the i386 arch for the clients.

 sudo ltsp-build-client --arch i386

Some advice

• Every user session is loaded on the server, so you will need a relatively powerful machine. A gigabit link is recommended between the server and the client switch. It is also a good idea to use fast disks in the server, or even RAID systems, and it is highly recommended to use multiprocessor servers.
• The first user session to load will consume between 250 and 300MB of RAM, and every next session will use between 50 and 80MB. This can help to calculate the amount of RAM needed for the server, but take in count that it will vary depending of what programs the users will load.
• The minimal requirements for the clients are 48MB of RAM, and a 200Mhz processor or the i386 (recommended) or amd64 architectures. The recommended values are a 400Mhz processor and 128MB of RAM. The client software has sound support and USB or CD disks will be automatically mounted.

Connect to the #Trisquel IRC channel

The Trisquel project has an official IRC chat channel that anyone can join. This guide will tell you how to quickly connect to the #trisquel channel if you have no previous experience with IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

1. Start up the XChat program (Menu Bar → Internet → XChat IRC)
2. Choose a username and nicknames.
3. Trisquel's channel is hosted on FreeNode, a popular service for free software projects. Choose Freenode from the list and click "Connect".

1. Type /join #trisquel and press Enter. You should be connected in a few moments.
2. Use the /help command to get a full list of commands, and ask around the channel for any further assistance.

Customizing a Trisquel iso

To customize a Trisquel .iso image, you must first download it and place it in an empty directory. Open a terminal and go to that directory, then follow these steps.

Unpacking

• Become root. All commands below will be run as root.

 sudo su

• Create an empty directory and mount the iso on it, then extract the contents:

 mkdir tmp
 mount -o loop trisquel-original.iso tmp
 cp tmp -a src
 umount tmp

• Extract the squashed image files into casper/filesystem.squashfs:

 mount src/casper/filesystem.squashfs -o loop tmp
 cp tmp -a jail
 umount tmp

The Preseed File

Trisquel comes with a preseed file which allows preloading values into the debconf database. You can find the file at src/preseed/trisquel.seed. The file contains commented examples on the changes it can make, like changing the default locale, setting a static network configuration, or automagically installing an extra set of packages before the live-to disk install process (which you need internet access during the install to do).

If you can achieve all the customization you need by changing this file, you can omit the next step.

Making Changes

Now you have the Trisquel system files in the jail directory, and you can start to apply changes. To install or remove packages, you need to enter the jail using chroot:

 cp /etc/resolv.conf jail/etc
 chroot jail
 mount none /proc -t proc
 apt-get update
 apt-get install package
 echo "" > /etc/resolv.conf
 umount /proc
 exit

 cp jail/boot/vmlinuz-custom src/isolinux/vmlinuz
 cp jail/boot/initrd.img-custom src/isolinux/initrd

Repacking

After your modifications are done, you will need to rebuild the squashfs and .iso images. Install squashfs-tools:

 apt-get install squashfs-tools

• Compress the jail into the squashfs file, deleting the original one:

 rm src/casper/filesystem.squashfs
 mksquashfs jail src/casper/filesystem.squashfs -nolzma

• Finally, create a new .iso image:

 mkisofs -D -r -V "My Trisquel modified version" -cache-inodes \
 -J -l -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat -no-emul-boot \
 -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -o trisquel-modified.iso src

Enable DVD Playback

By default, Trisquel is unable to decode and play most DVDs because it lacks a library to bypass the CSS (Content Scrambling System) algorithm that protects commercial DVDs. You need a simple free software library called libdvdcss2, which bypasses the encryption and includes an API to access DVDs as a block device. Also, libdvdcss2 ignores region codes.

Getting the Package

1. Go to http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/ and download the latest version (currently 1.2.10) in .deb format.
2. Open the .deb file and click on "Install Package". DVD playback should work immediately.

How to Rip an Audio CD

Introduction

Instructions

• Insert the Audio CD into your computer's CD-ROM drive.
• By default, a dialog window should pop up saying that an Audio CD was inserted, asking you what you want to do. "Open Rhythmbox" should be the default option. Click OK.

• If not, open Rhythmbox manually (Sound & Video → Rhythmbox Music Player). Note: Your menu may not look exactly like the one in the picture.

• Your CD should appear in the left-side pane. Click on it.

• Click the "Extract" button on the toolbar near the top of the window.

• Wait for Rhythmbox to finish extracting the files. That's it! You're done!

Configuration

How to configure ZTE MF626 3G Modem

I will show two methods I've learned of how to do it.

This was tested in Trisquel GNU/Linux Dwyn.

--

Minimum Requirements

kernel linux 2.6.29* or above

You can download recent kernel DEB packages from aligunduz.org, which has 100% FOSS kernel DEBs available: http://aligunduz.org/gNewSense I tested only with the 2.6.30.7 version

You must install in that order:

• linux-headers-2.6*.deb
• linux-headers-2.6*.deb

xplc Usually, already included in Trisquel.

wvstreams Usually, already included in Trisquel.

uniconf Usually, already included in Trisquel.

wvdial Usually, already included in Trisquel.

ppp Usually, already included in Trisquel.

--

• Install the packages mentioned above, as metioned above.
• Restart your computer.
• Insert the modem.
• Wait until the modem automounts in your Desktop.

--

1º Method

--

• Eject the modem and wait a few seconds until it's available to connect in the Network Manager panel applet. This if for the modem can switch from Storage to Modem mode.
• Click on the Network Manager panel applet and select your modem to connect.

--

2º Method

--

Open a Terminal and type:

eject /media/ZTEMODEM

--

Wait 15-20 seconds so the modem can switch from Storage to Modem mode.

--

ls /dev/ttyUSB*

If it is recognized, proceed.

--

sudo su

--

wvdialconf

--

gedit /etc/wvdial.conf

--

Copy and paste this:

[Dialer Defaults] Init1 = ATZ Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0 Modem Type = Analog Modem ISDN = 0 New PPPD = yes Phone = *99# Modem = /dev/ttyUSB2 Username = *insert your ISP username here* Stupid Mode = 1 Password = *insert your ISP password here* Baud = 921600

--

Your ISP DNSs may or may not download automatically during the first connection attempt. In any case, if you know what DNSs your ISP uses, put it on the resolve.conf fife as described below.

gedit /etc/ppp/resolv.conf

--

Copy and paste this:

nameserver *insert your ISP DNS here* nameserver *insert your ISP secondary DNS here*

--

wvdial

-- Reference http://www.vivaolinux.com.br/dica/3G-VIVO-ZTE-MF626-Ubuntu-9.04

Installing OSS4 on Trisquel 4.0

NOTE: This will only work on Trisquel 4.0 "taranis". Earlier versions of Trisquel do not have the necessary packages.

Why might you want OSS4?

OSS4 is an alternative sound interface to ALSA. It has numerous advantages over ALSA, including:

• OSS is portable, and runs on most modern *nix systems. ALSA is specific to the kernel Linux, meaning that cross-platform applications need to support multiple sound interfaces.
• OSS has a simpler API than ALSA, so programmers can spend less time making sound work and more time working on cool new features.
• OSS sound card drivers can deliver better quality audio than those for ALSA.
• I have noticed that some programs refuse to open at certain sample rates even though my sound card supports them with ALSA, but with OSS4 I have had no such problems.

For more detail on the benefits of OSS, read The Sorry State of Sound in Linux. This article was written a few months before OSS was re-released as free software in 2007, so bear in mind that when it refers to OSS as "closed source", this no longer applies.

Unfortunately, OSS having been proprietary software for some time, most GNU+Linux distributions have focused exclusively on making ALSA work out of the box and forgotten about OSS. You therefore have to jump through a few hoops to get OSS4 to work, but this document is intended to make that as easy as possible for you. :) I will also go through making PulseAudio work with OSS4, since it is installed in Trisquel by default; you also have the option of removing it (simply uninstall the "pulseaudio" package in your favourite package manager if you want to do this). PulseAudio isn't really necessary unless you want to use programs that don't support OSS, since OSS4 features easy-to-use software mixing.

Step 1 - Install OSS4 packages

I prefer using aptitude to install packages, but as always you can use apt-get if you prefer. The packages you'll need are oss4-base and oss4-source; I also installed oss4-gtk which installs a GTK+ OSS mixer.

 $ sudo aptitude install oss4-base oss4-source oss4-gtk

Step 2 - Build OSS4 kernel modules

The oss4-base package will install OSS4 itself, but not the kernel modules needed to interface with your sound card; these are found in source form in oss4-source. You need to use module-assistant program to build these modules (oss4-source depends on it, so it was installed in step 1). First, we need to install the packages module-assistant needs to function:

 $ sudo module-assistant prepare

 $ sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-$(uname -r | sed s/-generic//g) /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/source

 $ sudo module-assistant auto-install oss4

Step 3 - Configure OSS as your default sound engine

By default, ALSA will still be configured as the default sound engine. To set this as OSS instead, perform the following command:

 $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure linux-sound-base

 $ sudo aptitude remove alsa-base alsa-utils

Step 4 - Configure PulseAudio

PulseAudio is extremely easy to set up to use OSS; you only need to perform a simple modification to a single file. Into a terminal, type:

 $ sudo gedit /etc/pulse/default.pa

 #load-module module-oss device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input

 load-module module-oss device="/dev/dsp" sink_name=output source_name=input mmap=0

 ### Automatically load driver modules depending on the hardware available
 .ifexists module-udev-detect.so
 load-module module-udev-detect
 .else
 ### Alternatively use the static hardware detection module (for systems that
 ### lack udev support)
 load-module module-detect
 .endif

Step 5 - Reboot and start the OSS mixer frontend

Now reboot your system. When it starts back up, press Alt+F2 and enter:

 ossxmix

All in all, not the most intuitive mixer in the world to use, but once you get the hang of it everything should be fine.

Step 6 - Make sure PulseAudio is working

You can test PulseAudio by first turning your volume down (and I mean way down; this command is going to produce harsh noise if it works), and typing this into a terminal:

 $ cat /dev/urandom | pacat

Further reading and references

The Sorry State of Sound in Linux

Configuring Applications for OSS4

Tips and Tricks

Troubleshooting

OpenSound - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Configuring Sound on Linux/Pulse Audio/Testing

Installing Trisquel on a Server

The howto below is mostly outdated with the new netinstall method. The current recommended method is just using the text mode installer included in the LTS editions, and selecting the linux-image-server kernel image.

The 2.x robur LTS version of Trisquel is a very good choice for a server: it has a 64 bit version -needed for 4GB+ RAM, and recommended for virtualization-, a server-optimized linux-libre kernel, and a Xen linux-libre kernel as well.

We are working in a netinst image, wich will allow you to install a server using a small and handy iso image with a full featured installer which downloads the needed packages from the desired Trisquel mirror. In the meantime, you can use this howto to manually install a clean server environment.

You will need...

• A Trisquel 2.x CD. Any of them should should do, we recommend you to use a i386 image to build a 32 bit server and a amd64 to build a 64 bit one.

• A server with compatible hardware. You can use almost any x86/x86_64 server, but take care not to buy parts with no free drivers, as they will not work.

• Some skills about managing a Debian based server. If you are a newbie, install the edu edition with the included installer and use it as a server -with the desktop environment-.

Starting

Start a Live CD session in your server -we recommend to start in in English-. Open a terminal. All the commands listed below will be run in that terminal.

Partition and format your disk

You can partition a disk in a lot of ways and using different hardware configurations. For the purposes of this howto, we will assume that you are installing Trisquel in a single and empty SATA/SCSI disk with no RAID.

NOTE: We will refer to the disk as /dev/sda

Start the partition manager cfdisk. If you like to start with an empty layout, use this command:

 sudo cfdisk -z

 DEVICE     MOUNTPOINT   FILESYSTEM    SIZE
 /dev/sda1  /            ext3          5GB
 /dev/sda2  swap         swap          1.5 times the memory size
 /dev/sda3  /tmp         XFS           1GB
 /dev/sda4  /home        XFS           the rest of the disk

• The swap is optional, it will be needed if you want to have suspend-to-disk support.
• Never use XFS for the partition containing /boot
• Having /tmp in a partition will keep the server from crashing by fullness.

So, use cfdisk to break the disk into that pieces, and save. Now to format the partitions, use this commands:

 sudo mkswap /dev/sda2
 sudo mkfs.ext3 /dev/sda1
 sudo mkfs.xfs /dev/sda3
 sudo mkfs.xfs /dev/sda4

Mount the disk

 sudo mkdir /target

 sudo mount /dev/sda1 /target

Install the base system

You will use debootstrap to download and install a trisquel base environment. You will need to update the Live CD apt lists and install it first:

 sudo aptitude update
 sudo aptitude install debootstrap

 sudo debootstrap --arch=amd64 trisquel /target http://mirror
 # or just:
 sudo debootstrap trisquel /target

Configure the base system

You will need to configure your installation, and the first step is to fill the /target/etc/apt/sources.list file. You can just copy the file from the Live CD or use this contents:

 # Trisquel repositories for supported software and updates
 deb http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel robur main extras
 deb-src http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel robur main extras
 deb http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel robur-updates main extras
 deb-src http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel robur-updates main extras
 deb http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel robur-security main extras
 deb-src http://archive.trisquel.info/trisquel robur-security main extras

You must now setup the server network, by editing the /target/etc/network/interfaces file:

 gedit /target/etc/network/interfaces

 sudo chroot /target

 # set the server hostname and hosts file
 echo boxname > /etc/hostname
 echo "127.0.0.1 localhost" > /etc/hosts
 echo "127.0.0.1 boxname" > /etc/hosts
 
 # set the root password
 passwd
 
 # mount /proc
 mout none /proc -t proc
 
 # configure the keyboard and timezone
 dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
 dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
 
 # update the apt lists
 aptitude update
 
 # install the trisquel-base package
 aptitude install trisquel-base
 
 # install a linux-libre kernel image and boot loader package
 aptitude install linux-image-server grub
 
 # copy the grub files to /boot and run the grub config updater
 cp /usr/lib/grub/* /boot/grub -a
 update-grub
 
 # If you prefer to have bash instead of dash as default shell, run this:
 dpkg-reconfigure dash
 
 # umount /proc
 umount /proc
 
 # exit the chroot
 exit

Install the boot loader

 sudo grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/mnt/target /dev/sda

Edit the fstab

You need to edit the /target/etc/fstab file according to the disk layout you made. This is the fstab file that matches our suggested selections:

 #<file system> <mount point>   60    61       62  63
  proc          /proc           proc      defaults        0       0
  /dev/sda2     swap            sw        defaults        0       0
  /dev/sda1     /               ext3      relatime        0       1
  /dev/sda3     /tmp            xfs       relatime        0       2
  /dev/sda4     /home           xfs       relatime        0       2

What to do next?

Install a Xen environment

 aptitude install trisquel-server-xen

Build a GLAMP server

To serve web pages, the most common web server is apache. If you don't need php or a database, just type this:

 aptitude install apache2

 aptitude install apache2 mysql-server phpmyadmin

Mirroring Trisquel

You can contribute to our project by setting and maintaining a mirror. If you do, please tell us so we can publicize it, and follow this instructions:

Mirroring the ISO images

Most of our traffic comes from the iso image downloads. If you have a server with ~20GB (currently 16) of space and a high bandwidth connection, you can turn it into a Trisquel iso mirror with a command like this:

 rsync -rlpthi --delete --stats rsync.trisquel.info::trisquel.iso .

Mirroring the package repository

If you have up to 300GB of free space you can mirror our package repository. It includes every source and binary -i386 and amd64- packages available for all our editions and versions, and is used by the final users for upgrades and security updates. The suggested command would be this:

 rsync -rlpthi --delete-after --stats rsync.trisquel.info::trisquel.packages .

Mirror list

• rsync.trisquel.info is provided by the Free Software Foundation and located in the USA.

Archive Mirrors

• http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel
  • Free Software Foundation. USA.
• ftp|http://ftp.udc.es/trisquel
  • University of A Coruña. A Coruña, Spain.

ISO Mirrors

• http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel-images
  • Free Software Foundation. Boston, MA, USA.
• ftp://es.gnu.org/pub/trisquel/
  • GNU Spain.
• ftp|http://ftp.udc.es/trisquel-iso/
  • University of A Coruña. A Coruña, Spain.
• http://ftp.linux.org.tr/trisquel/iso/
  • Turkey Linux Users Association. Turkey.
• http://gdsol.uta.cl/trisquel/iso/
  • University Tarapacá of Arica. Chile.
• http://gnulinuxlibre.net/wp-content/uploads/mirror/trisquel/
  • http://gnulinuxlibre.net USA

Play Videos Without Using Flash

The Trouble with Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is used to deliver the bulk of the video, advertisement, and browser-based game content on the internet. Unfortunately, both the SWF format itself and the decoder that Adobe releases is entirely proprietary; in short, Adobe's market share is more important to them than their potential to make the internet a better place for openness and cooperation. Fortunately, for those of us that consciously value our freedoms, other alternatives exist.

There are two free software Flash players:

• Swfdec, which has good compatibility but abruptly ceased to be developed sometime in early 2009.
• Gnash, the GNU SWF player, which is being rapidly developed and relies on the gstreamer and ffmpeg backends to perform. It has good compatibility up to SWF 8 and 9.

YouTube

The video-sharing phenomenon that is YouTube started in 2005 and took the world wide web by storm almost overnight. To the dismay of Free Software users everywhere, use of SWF became unavoidable. The following year, Google Inc. bought the service and has owned it ever since. In 2010, Google started an opt-in experiment to view videos with the new HTML5 specification as an alternative to Flash. Unfortunately, the format they have chosen is the closed, patent-encumbered H.264, not an open, royalty-free format like Theora. Contrary to Google's rhetoric, this decision has nothing to do with the technical capabilities of the Theora format, and everything to do with Google's promoting their own proprietary Chrome browser.

The latest versions of both Gnash and Swfdec should be able to play YouTube videos with good performance. However, users have reported that some YouTube videos refuse to play at all while others work just fine. There is a fallback solution available if you experience such an issue:

1. Download the free software Greasemonkey add-on for the browser.
2. Get the "YouTube Perfect" script for Greasemonkey, and also the embedded version.
3. An alternate Greasemonkey script you can use, if the above does not work for you, is YouTube without Flash Auto.
4. Now you can view any YouTube video as an MP4 video.

Dailymotion

Dailymotion is another popular video sharing website. They launched around the same time as YouTube although never quite reached the same level of success.

In 2009 Dailymotion did something wonderful for Free Software by opening an alternative HTML5 portal to the website and converting many of their videos to Theora format.

Although Dailymotion is to be commended for this decision, there are still several problems that we should ignore:

• Hundreds of thousands of videos are available in Theora format right now, especially the very popular ones, but many more videos have not been re-encoded and are Flash-only.
• You have to be a MotionMaker (a certified uploader of original content) to even have the option of uploading videos as HTML5.
• Dailymotion does not advertise this portal very well. Someone could potentially use Dailymotion for a long time and never know the Theora portal exists.

Linterna Mágica

There are some patterns common between video sharing and posting sites that Linterna Mágica is using, so it supports a lot of sites. In most cases it will work without modification. Some websites even have high definition support.

Supported browsers are:

• Epiphany
• ABrowser
• Midori

Supported video plugins are:

• Totem plugin
• VLC plugin
• Xine plugin

This is a short list of supported websites:

• youtube.com
• video.google.com
• dailymotion.com
• metacafe.com
• vimeo.com
• blip.tv

How You Can Help

• Use free alternatives to Flash whenever and wherever you can.
• Let your friends know that most of the videos and games on the web rely on a single company's closed standard to work, and why this is bad for an open and cooperative vision of the internet.
• If you develop online games, don't use Flash. Use a free platform such as OpenJDK Java to deliver content inside the browser, and please share your source code.
• Adobe has a poor track record with freedom, and it isn't going to change its policies overnight. If our community can eventually convince Adobe to make some concessions, such as publicly documenting the SWF standard, or releasing the source code at least for the GNU/Linux version of its Flash player, it would improve the situation greatly.

Setup a Printer

Checking for Compatibility

Look up your printer manufacturer and model at http://www.openprinting.org/printers and see which drivers your printer requires and how it performs. Be careful, because some of the printers in this database require proprietary software to run.

Setup

1. Install the driver for your printer. Some common drivers like HPLIP and Ghostscript are already in Trisquel's default installation. Open the default printing manager in the Menu Bar (System → Administration → Printing).
2. Connect your printer to your computer.
3. The printer should be detected and show up momentarily.

Configuration

1. Open the Printer Properties menu by right-clicking on the printer you have connected and clicking "Properties".

1. In the "Policies" section, check the "Enabled" and "Accepting Jobs" checkboxes, and "Shared" if you want to share the printer over a network.
2. In the "Access Control" section, you can allow or deny access to other users.
3. In the "Printer Options" section, the default settings are probably best, but if you want to conserve ink, you can change the default printout mode from "Normal" (color or grayscale) to "Draft".
4. The "Job Options" section lets you change how your printer handles print jobs. It is generally best to keep the default settings.
5. Finally, click the "Print Test Page" button under the "Settings" section to get a test page.

Getting Your Cartridge Levels

1. Go to this website and check if your printer model (it must be a Canon, Epson, or HP printer, currently) is supported by libinklevel, the library used by Inkblot. This library is quite sophisticated, so chances are good that as long as your printer is not on the "unsupported" list, your ink levels will be correctly reported anyway.
2. Install Inkblot with the Add/Remove Applications tool, or by simply typing sudo apt-get install inkblot in the terminal.
3. Open the program, located in your Menu Bar (System Tools → Inkblot). It will show up in your panel.
4. Double-click the icon. Your black and color cartridge levels will be displayed.

Awen

The 3.5.x STS version, codenamed Awen and based on Ubuntu Karmic, was released on March 22, 2010.

As an STS (short term support) version, Awen will be supported for one year after release.

One interesting update included in this release is the new disk layout, using Ext4 for the system partition, including the boot directory for faster booting, and XFS for the home directory to lower memory consumption and avoid tedious Ext4 memory checks for large partitions. We also followed our upstream by moving to Grub 2 and Upstart, for a more flexible boot manager and a faster system initialization.

Software versions

• Linux-libre 2.6.31
• GNOME 2.28
• OpenOffice.org 3.1.1
• Trisquel Web Browser 3.5.7
• Gimp 2.6.8
• Rhythmbox 0.12.5
• Totem Movie Player 2.28.2
• Pidgin 2.6.2
• Xorg 7.4

The media center Moovida, previously called Elisa, is a very cool manager for video, audio, images and internet media resources. We removed the Audacious player because the new version has fewer translations and its functionality is covered by Rhythmbox. We also added an ogg/ogv encoder.

Support is included for the following languages:

• English (default and with extras and writing tools ^[1])
• Spanish (extras and writing tools)
• Basque
• Catalonian
• Chinese (with input tools)
• French
• Galician
• Hindi (with input tools)
• Portuguese

1: The extras include the OpenOffice.org help and spellcheckers. Chinese and Hindi iBus input methods and tools are also included.

There is support for both 32 and 64-bit architectures.

Dwyn

The 3.x STS version, codenamed Dwyn and based on Ubuntu Jaunty, was released on September 10, 2009. It was updated to 3.0.1 in December of the same year.

As an STS (short term support) version, Dwyn will be supported for one year after release.

Software versions and distro editions

• Linux-libre 2.6.28
• GNOME 2.26
• OpenOffice.org 3.0
• Trisquel Web Browser 3.0
• Gimp 2.6.6
• Xorg 7.4

Support is included for the following languages:

• English (default and with extras and writing tools ^[1])
• Spanish (with extras and writing tools)
• Basque
• Catalonian
• Chinese (with input tools)
• French
• Galician
• Hindi (with input tools)
• Portuguese

1: The extras include the OpenOffice.org help and spellcheckers. Chinese and Hindi SCIM input methods and tools are also included.

There is support for both 32 and 64-bit architectures.

Robur

The 2.x LTS edition, codenamed Robur, was the first Ubuntu-based Trisquel, released in July of 2008. It was updated to 2.1 in December of the same year, and to 2.2 in August of 2009.

Robur is an LTS (long term support) version, which will be supported until mid-2011, getting security updates until 2013.

Software versions and distro editions

• Linux-libre 2.6.24
• GNOME 2.22
• OpenOffice.org 2.4
• Trisquel Web Browser 3.0
• Gimp 2.4
• Xorg 7.3

The distro has three editions:

• Trisquel, for home use
• Trisquel Edu, for schools
• Trisquel Pro, for small enterprises

As for the 2.2 update, all three editions include support for the following languages:

• English (default and with extras and writing tools ^[1])
• Spanish (extras and writing tools)
• Basque
• Catalonian
• Chinese (with input tools)
• French
• Galician
• Hindi (with input tools)
• Portuguese

1: The extras include the OpenOffice.org help and spellcheckers. Chinese and Hindi SCIM input methods and tools are also included.

All of the editions support 32 and 64-bit architectures.

Add-ons

This is a list of free software extensions, themes and translations for the browser. It is a work in progress, and we need volunteers to add and maintain content. Here are a few basic stipulations you should adhere to before adding content:

1. To keep the size to a workable minimum, redundant entries are to be avoided; if two different add-ons perform essentially the same function, list only the one with broader functionality, better version compatibility, more support, etc.
2. This the only section of Trisquel's online documentation that you should not translate. The list of add-ons, and its many individual entries, requires a large amount of time and effort to maintain and keep up-to-date, so maintaining more than one translation is not feasible at this point in time.
3. Links to the external websites of the authors of the software are for your reference only. We do not endorse any unethical (i.e. non-free) software that you may happen to find on these websites.
4. GPL version 3 is the preferred license.

Extensions

Themes

Note: Thousands of themes can be viewed and applied effortlessly with the Personas extension. This list only includes the themes that do not rely on Personas Plus.

Translations

This list contains dictionaries to add spell-checking support in your language, and language packs to translate the browser interface into your language.

The primary maintainer of this list is AndrewT. Please notify me of new free add-ons to add, proprietary add-ons on this list, changes in version compatibility, etc.

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