First impressions
The windows key doesn't open the start menu, and my laptop doesn't use a freedom wifi card which sucks but Trisquel is like Linux in it's early days especially because Ubuntu didn't have wifi drivers for my laptop. I now realize that the fully free oses mean no hand holding, this distro and pureos are the only two fully free os still worked on based on either debian or Ubuntu, I hope to find a wifi card or manufacturer that puts out a freedom wifi driver I can replace my laptop with. I installed Trisquel to simulate libre planet 2022 next year and the games I have on it right now are minetest, 0ad. I am currently checking wiki for only freedom games libre games for short
Hello wrenchie,
You could replace the main menu with brisk menu. Brisk menu works as you expect (using the super/"windows" key). To install Brisk menu type this in the terminal
sudo apt install mate-applet-brisk-menu
To replace the default main menu:
1. Right click on the default menu
2. Click Lock to panel to remove the lock
3. Right click on the menu again and then click on remove from panel
4. Right click on the space of the panel left by the main menu. Click Add to Panel...
5. Search the Brisk menu and click on Add
I hope that helps make your experience a little more familiar
From memory, Alt+F1 is the default default keyboard shortcut to open MATE's main menu and it is modifiable (including for the Windows key?) from the "Keyboard Shortcuts" utility.
Yep, that's true. The only issue is the main menu doesn't offer a search box.
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If you can't find a freedom-respecting wifi internal board, you can order a usb dongle from Think Penguin. I have one of the dongles, and I recently bought one of their laptops.
Thanks to the second poster for the suggestion re: brisk menu; I may do that soon.
Besides vendors such as ThinkPenguin and Technoethical, selling RYF hardware ( https://ryf.fsf.org ), one can search "AR9271" on a site such as eBay. AR9271 is, by far, the most common Wi-Fi chipset (for USB adapters) supported by a free firmware, firmware-ath9k-htc, which is installed by default on Trisquel. But it is good to support vendors respecting your freedom.
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@beformed Let's try replacing the main menu with Briskmenu as suggested. That search box is handy, as is the shortcuts gui. For now, I bound a shortcut to mate-control-center, and search for preferences guis from there. Works well. In a new installation, I do my setup (setting shortcuts, brightness, etc) from mate-control-center.
For most non-Atheros wireless NICs, they do have free/libre drivers. The problem is that they require non-free firmware.