How about we skip 5.5 and move to 6.0 instead?
I know some of you disagree with this thought but hear me out for a few minutes:
1. By the time 5.5 is released, it will already be around 5 months since the Ubuntu 11.10 release and a month or so before the 12.04 LTS release. When 5.5 is released, we will have to wait an additional 4-5 months to get our hands on the LTS release of Trisquel. The non LTS versions of Ubuntu have shorter lifecycles and with having 5.5 so deep into the release of 11.10, we essentially lost half a year of support.
2. For all the testing you are doing right now with settings, themes, and anything else to customize the full Trisquel experience, it can be transitioned to 6.0. The XFCE work, the GTK themes, and program settings should be pretty similar between the 11.10 and 12.04 codebases. Instead of putting your main resources into 5.5 and then the full effort again for 6.0 soon after, why not cut the work in half by focusing on a solid LTS release.
3. Beta 1 of Ubuntu 12.04 will be out on March 1st. By moving development to coincide with the Ubuntu release, the Trisquel team will be able to develop alongside the most recent code and could potentially get 6.0 a month or so within the Ubuntu one instead of 5 months. I know some teams like Linux Mint have more resources, but if development can mirror the official one, Trisquel can get sooner releases and more people will try out Trisquel when the release of 12.04 is still hot.
All in all, this is just a brainstorm on my end to speed up the releases of Trisquel. Of course I do not own the project and cannot make these decisions, but I think they are valid.
What do you think?
Trisquel 5.5 will be released on March 24.[1]
I think the release date of Trisquel is strategic.
In March - LibrePlanet
In September - Freedom Software Day
I think that's why.
Apparently Ruben is giving a speech announcing 5.5 at 11 am?
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If it would be better to attract more people, but also has some good things as updates and bugs fixes until Trisquel release day (Ubuntu usually has many bugs on his first version), and this makes more stable Trisquel release.
In addition, to be faster in development more hands are needed to work in the project development, which is quite poor at present.
If Trisquel could release a version within a week or so of the official Ubuntu one, that would be best. People will be researching the new Ubuntu release and having Trisquel on Distrowatch as a new release as a totally free alternative to Ubuntu would help its cause. If it is 5 months after Ubuntu, the hype has died down and people would be wondering why this release is based off such an old release when a new one is around the corner.
With Trisquel pretty much a new skin on Ubuntu with removal of non-free packages and customizations, what is the reason for such the long release cycles? I'm not trying to be mean here but the majority of work for the ecosystem first starts with Debian, then Canonical polishing the Debian packages for Ubuntu, and finally the Trisquel team customizing it. In addition, the team has had previous releases so they aren't starting from scratch with themes, icons, recommended programs, and default settings.
As Khany said, there is the issue about bugs. Even if Trisquel were to release a month later like with Linux Mint, many launch day bugs are ironed out. I'm currently running 4.0 and would love to jump to the next LTS as soon as possible. Unfortunately I will have to stick with it for an additional 6 months but if I was running pure Ubuntu now, I would have to wait a month.
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It seems like everybody has some good points. The stability one in particular. I think you are right though in regards to it not taking that long for the 'bugs' to get ironed out. This is assuming Canonical bothers to fix them post-release. Canonical has done a better job of fixing bugs than other commercial distributions of the past. Though they have a larger developer pool. Some critical bugs though have gone unfixed for one reason or another.
I suspect Ruben could probably get releases out much faster. Probably within a month of Ubuntu if not sooner.
If it were me working on Trisquel the reason I wouldn't be doing it that way is because it is easier to wait until Ubuntu's final release to get started working on a derivative distribution. It might be doable sooner than that without adding complications though. Probably once the features are finalized it is sufficient enough to get started on without complications.
In any case working on Trisquel's customizations prior to Ubuntu's final release would probably largely solve the problem of getting releases out sooner.
All this said I'm not sure Trisquel needs to be released that quickly. It may even be better for it to be released when there aren't others making announcements as Trisquel is likely to get more attention then.
I'll try to make a point by example. How many people searching for Ubuntu or Linux Mint are going to even see Trisquel on distrowatch? It is in the 95th place out of 100. This is at the very bottom. Richard Stallman probably does more for getting people to look at Trisquel and other free distros than anyone. This isn't to put any one down. It is just his activism through talking with the media, giving speeches, and so on that get people to look into free software. From there they find Trisquel.
There are other people involved of course. His secretary for one (my apologies if I got the title wrong- I know she does a lot of different things including coordination), amongst those doing the requests in the first place, and others.
I am not sure if Trisquel has anything to do with "hipe".
Trisquel is a product that offer stability and great look together. Personaly, i don't care if the next release gets out 5 or 10 months after Ubuntu's last release.
Is ubuntu stick with the debian's calendar? Do they even take care of what debian do? No! They do their own businness and offer their own product.
Trisquel is a distribution based on ubuntu and that's all they have in common. I don't ask Trisquel to follow ubuntu in any ways. I want a FREED stable OS, something that ubuntu can't give me.
Ubuntu and Trisquel are going in totaly opposite direction and this is why i am here.
Well a schedule does matter when Trisquel relies on updated packages and security updates from Ubuntu. When Ubuntu stops supporting older, non LTS releases, the updates stop for the Ubuntu ecosystem.
For example, support for Trisquel 5.0 ends in October when Natty support ends. Another reason why I am strict to the LTS releases for my development machine.
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I think you make a good point. We shouldn't really be too concerned about hyping Trisquel at this stage. I've said it before that turning people onto the distribution who will undoubtedly never touch it again is not beneficial.
There are people who it wouldn't hurt to target though. Promoting free software and the avoidance of non-free software is fine. Promoting Trisquel in technical circles is probably fine too. These users won't try it, fail, and never return. They are much more likely to try it at a later point and possibly stick with it.
If you get people installing Trisquel and they then install Adobe Flash and other non-free pieces it dilutes the message about free software and hinders adoption of it. Companies will see a community that compromises and not release specifications/drivers/firmware/plug-ins/etc under free software licenses.