Natty now unsupported. Trisquel 5.0 users should upgrade soon.
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/ubuntu-11-04-support-ends-today
October 28th marked the day that Ubuntu 11.04, the first release to introduce Unity, will no longer recieve support from Canonical. In return, there will be no more package updates for it and its deriatives (like Trisquel) from now on should upgrade to a later version soon. In return, this means that Trisquel users on 5.0 should upgrade to 5.5 until 6 comes out. Of course Trisquel 4 users are in the clear as that operating system is still supported for another year or so.
Even if Ubuntu 11.04 isn't supported anymore that doesn't mean that users from Triquel 5.0 should make the jump to 5.5 too. I mean, I don't know the support calendar for Trisquel Distributions, but even if the "base" is not supported anymore nothing is blocking us (or better, Rúben) to continue the support for those Distributions.
Now, one thing is true. I don't know if any support is somehow possible if bugs are still existent on Trisquel 5.5 (and not on Ubuntu 12.04) and Trisquel 6 is just a pure mess at this time with all of the compiz and gnome-fallback bugs (I know it is a pre-alpha build but still).
What blocks is the manpower. Clearly, Trisquel cannot maintain a whole repository by itself (e.g., applying security patches and repackaging the result).
I totally understand that but I'm pretty sure that this situation won't change in the short time. We have a small community of people that really care about free software, this little community is divided over the small amount of Free Distributions (available on the FSF website for download). In top of that only a few will donate, and only a few will have the possibility to dedicate time to a project like this.
This is the sad reality. I already donated (and I will do that again when the possibility appears) and I know that a lot of people here already donated more than me but the problem still persists. I think that most donation should be concentrated in "core programs" that people really need and are available only on others non-free Distributions. As an example, we already saw that a lot of people start using Trisquel and love it, but then stop using it just because there is no Drivers for their Wireless Card (as an example), and since we can't give them support for that (since it is against the Trisquel forum rules) they go back to Ubuntu or anything like that. I'm not saying that those rules must be changed, just that this is a real issue.
As an example. If I had the choice between donating to Trisquel or donating for a team to create more free drivers and free firmwares of well know and very used hardware, I would donate for the last one, for a simple reason, by improving this I was improving (indirectly) Trisquel itself, and because of that a lot of people would start to use Trisquel since there will be no problem with the hardware, and maybe those people will donate more to Trisquel than I ever could donate myself.
Now, it is true that manpower is what is blocking all of this (and money of course), but we have to admit that this isn't the best organized solution right now, a lot of people have already complained about this, about the lack of "direct" contact with the creator, and even with the lack of possibilities to help. Rúben must be really busy and I respect that, but I also agree with Chris, we should create a document with all the necessary information to send to Rúben so he could take a look and see what can be done by us for Trisquel (since Trisquel is the reason we are (almost) all here.)
I really do not understand the link between "extending the support for a Trisquel version" (the topic of this thread) and "developing/improving the drivers in Linux-libre" (the topic you are bringing with your last post).
Besides, the various 100% free distributions do not divide the work on the free kernel: it all happens within the Linux-libre project... which, to date, mainly removes proprietary code and does not substitute it.
I know that. I was just saying that if it was a way to help improving the drivers in order o replace them from the original kernel, then "maybe" without those having to be removed from the original kernel in order to create the Linux-Libre Kernel we would have more support, and thanks to that more people.
And as for the support in Trisquel, I'm just saying that, even if Trisquel is based on Ubuntu and hope to bring a Free version of Ubuntu, it doesn't need to stop the support at the exact time when Ubuntu does it. If bugs are still available then they can (and must) be corrected (mostly security).
But of course as you said, there isn't enough human power (and money) for this right now and this is the real problem that need to be solved.
I only talked about this in order to solve more "basic" problems so Rúben don't have to solve them or wait for Canonical to solve them. But just solve what he is creating (as an example, this beautiful, and simple to use, DE (which is gnome-fallback modified but still)) instead of correcting what have already been correct in other places, and worse, having the bugs created by Canonical on Trisquel (like it is the case of at least 3 plugins in compiz).
The reality is that Trisquel relies on the Ubuntu base for the security and general package updates. It is hard enough for Trisquel to be maintained with the current setup and if the Trisquel team were to go to Debian and take the update pack route like with Linux Mint Debian, the workload would triple.
The Natty files are still on the server, but are stagnant. Also, natty is no longer listed on their packages pages. For example: http://packages.ubuntu.com/precise/gcc
Old packages and releases: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/
I am a member!
Rubén mainly selects certain Ubuntu packages and customizes them (configures them) to work with free software systems. Don't mistake this for being a worthless effort though. It's an extremely time consuming effort. However it is nothing compared to reverse engineering hardware in order to produce a driver. That is not a task this community is readily capable of (on any scale at least). It is not something anybody would want to invest money in. It is almost always a waste of resources compared to what can be achieved if a company supported a driver writing effort (provides specs or the code). The simpler solution that does work is educating users about where to get free software friendly hardware and why they should care (particularly where they are not using a free software distribution... yet!). Non-free software is an ethical problem as well as a technical one. It causes all sorts of issues on distributions which include non-free software.
Examples:
Ubuntu: Adobe Flash is no longer supported; Adobe discontinued support for Firefox (security updates only)
Ubuntu: Oracle discontinued licensing for Oracle Java; what everybody has tested against (major issue for those dependent on it). Canonical had to pull support for Java because they could no longer package and release it. They also could not leave the software installed as it was a security risk for users. They decided to break users systems instead!!!! Wise move despite that although it shows the need to remove non-free software from the GNU/Linux stack.
Lexmark printers: Support/non-support has fluctuated over the years. They released a non-free driver a few years ago for a version or two of a particular distribution. Then they discontinued it. Bye-bye printer. Even if you knew what you were doing and could figure out how to get it to run (provided all the circumstances were met to satisfy its needs) you'd likely have spent a few hours to get it working with a newer version of a “supported” distribution. This is not just Lexmark printers. Samsung did it, Canon's done it or something similar (only supported GNU/Linux in Japn! And only for a specific release), and many many more.
Just being supported under “Linux” is not good enough. There are thousands of examples with thousands of devices and products. These are just a handful of good examples.
The solution is to direct users at free software compatible hardware and contribute to free software projects such as Trisquel, Lightspark, and others. Just getting all the pieces to fit is more important to increasing the number of users. The masses are use to paying for newer hardware.
Explaining it to a non-technical user is easy once you get the hang of it. I usually say something like this: There is a good chance your [printer, video card, wifi adapter, etc] will not work with a new computer [this is when most non-technical users switch to GNU/Linux]. This is because most manufacturers don't support discontinued hardware. Those who do generally don't support it for long and particularly not on newer systems. When something is supported long term it is usually because of a standard or because the company has made available the source code. Source code is what makes your printer work. When anybody can fix, improve upon, and work on this code you don't have to worry about the device working as you are no longer dependent on the manufacturer for support. Then point them to libre.thinkpenguin.com since it is simple, easy, etc to get hardware from us. Should some other company start doing this you could obviously point them elsewhere. Or should our catalog become available... point them to a store which sells it. There may also be a solution where you could point them to a certification logo if the free software foundation certification program takes off.
I agree with you in that point. But I was talking about letting the users know when things work. As an example, I switched to Ubuntu in 2004 because my hardware worked, in 2005 i bought a computer and the wireless didn't worked so I stopped using it (because I was a non-technical user). Later that year the wireless started working (proprietary drivers but still), and because of that I started to use Ubuntu as my main distribution. With that in mind I started to learn a little bit more about Linux and after that about Gnu/Linux, then I started to understand the Free Software View, and started to agree with it (even if I didn't understand it quite well).
I then made the switch to Arch Linux, but came back to Ubuntu a lot of times because things just worked out of the box in Ubuntu and not in Arch. But I tried and tried again until I finally stopped using Ubuntu and started using Arch Linux... And the story goes on until the day I got my Asus 1215N that make me came back to Windows since it is the only one with support for the Nvidia.
Now that I understand (90%) of the Freedoms and the GNU/GPL in general, I prefer to use a Distribution like Trisquel or Parabola even if sometimes things don't work (like some sites with Gnash or even some devices), than accepting a non-free software of driver that will take my freedoms away.
But to arrive at this place I had to have something working, and only when this "something" was working that I started to thing about the General view and not about the Specific View.
I started this because I remember a few days ago about a user that wanted support for a Wireless Card and then stopped to use Trisquel since the Wireless Card didn't work. It is true that, he's reaction is (almost) the perfect way to tell about someone that don't understand the importance of freedoms given my a distribution and a project like this one over the user (like myself a few months ago), but it show's that, even the most "mentally prepared" user that wanted to make the switch will have problems if simple stuff don't work (like the hardware).
Now it is true that we don't have enough people to solve this problem. But we already have a lot of developers (that sometimes uses Distribution with non-free stuff) that creates Free Software which all of us uses everyday (like the Nouveau Drivers). And what I was saying is that, we need to support both parts, but by now I am more willing to support something like the Nouveau drivers, because I know that it will break another bridge between the Free Software and the Non-Free Software, and by the same way it will help improving Trisquel and let more and more people come to Trisquel and only focus on what is important here... the freedom of the user over the machine/developer/entreprise/software etc... And this even if he/she isn't a developer.
Even the housewife could take a big step and improve the Free Software Idea just by sharing ".odp" files when she is working at a public place instead of the ".pptx" because she nows and understands why it was created and why she should use it.
I wrote so much that I'm pretty sure I made a mistake somewhere... so if it this the case excuse me :D
I am a translator!
Chris, free drivers enable users to use any GNU/Linux distro of their choice and lets them upgrade the drivers when using newer libraries but it does not solve all freedom related issues since the firmwares of the devices are not always free, which is why we hear of problems such as printers which print watermarks.