Packages in Trisquel 11 (or any other)
Hello all,
I just want to ask, why are packages VS Codium and Chromium missing from Trisquel packages? Were they non-free? Thank you for your answers.
I do not know if every freedom issue in Chromium has been fixed, but Chromium allows Google to track you. Prefer ungoogled-chromium. You should be able to install it on Trisquel 11 (and have APT keep it up-to-date) with the following commands, to be executed in a terminal:
$ echo 'deb http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/ungoogled_chromium/Ubuntu_Jammyl/ /' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/home:ungoogled_chromium.list
$ sudo wget -nv https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:ungoogled_chromium/Ubuntu_Jammy/Release.key -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/home:ungoogled_chromium.asc
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install ungoogled-chromium
I adapted them from https://askubuntu.com/a/1298506 (which are the proper commands if you still run Trisquel 10).
Or maybe Flatpak? It also has the ungoogled-chromium package. VScodium too - is there any libre issue with that too?
I am a translator!
In my understanding, chromium is so big that no one in relation with the FSF have ever been able to check all the licenses for its components and dependencies. As icecat/abrowser work fine, the official recommendation of the FSF is not to use chromium.
Ungoogled-chromium is removing things that call Google, so it is certainly better from a privacy perspective, but it does not address the issues of the licenses.
In principle, all distros that follow the FSDG should follow the official advice from the FSF but guix somehow decided on their own that ungoogled-chromium was ok and when someone raised this, the reply was "please show us the problem", which I tend to find unfair. After I became aware of this situation, I decided to stop using ungoogled chromium.
Nevertheless, it was the piece of software the most painful to update in guix that I have ever tried (not surprising given how big it is).
The size doesn't really matter. I once fed the Chromium source code into my FOSSology instance for analysis and found nonfree stuff in there. Some of the information is at https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Review:Chromium-REV-ID-1 under "Known issues (not exhaustive)".
Since I did indeed locate nonfree things within Chromium I believe that solves the matter for now.
My goal was not to compile an exhaustive list; once I identified nonfree things that would disqualify Chromium that was enough, I did not need to continue looking for additional reasons. If these are ever fixed I can always go back and check to see if there are more reasons.
The presence of unrar (in not only Chromium but also Iridium and ungoogled-chromium) was a problem I had found and reported on this forum four years ago (exactly, by coincidence) too: https://trisquel.info/forum/python-trap#comment-140538
I had found google-analytics-bundle.js too (proprietary JavaScript that spies).
I was hoping ungoogled-chromium had fixed those issues, given that it is in Guix's repository.
I am a translator!
Thanks for the reference.
According to your message, the non-free elements that you raised were removed from ungoogled-chromium, with, as only remaining issue, the support of DRM, but perhaps it is like in Firefox, i.e. Firefox itself does not include Widevine but invites the user to download it?
So no non-free sofware was identified in ungoogled-chromium, the only identified issue would be invitation to use DRM, but I would expect that it isn't difficult to remove that. If so, could ungoogled-chromium be in Trisquel?
Are there such a problems with VSCodium too?