Thanks : )
I wanted to thank the Trisquel team for providing a distro that is truly free. I discovered the distro and decided to give it a try on a legacy laptop that I had bought for my father years ago. This laptop hasn't had much use and is in A+ shape. I replaced the battery and everything else is freedom respecting. No bluetooth, wifi killswitch, no camera, etc. I'm getting a solid 3 hours from the battery using Abrowser, steaming music with Radio Tray and playing the occasional game of solitare, which is better than it performed with MS Vista (yuck).
Thanks to ChaosMonk, I was able to determine my system is also ME free. It runs Trisquel Mini 8.0 perfectly. I'm attaching a screenshot to encourage others who may have a legacy laptop/desktop to give Trisquel a try. I believe it is suitable for anyone who wants to switch to Linux and especially GNU/Linux.
Cheers!
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You are lucky that your legacy notebook has an Atheros card. The CPU is 64-bit so amd64 architecture Trisquel is recommended. You can consider upgrade its RAM, too.
The last sentence "... switch to Linux and especially GNU/Linux" is erroneous. "Linux" is not an operating system. Even a distribution, like Ubuntu, contains lots of non-free software, it is still a GNU/Linux distribution, and it contains no less GNU components compared with libre distributions like Trisquel.
> You are lucky that your legacy notebook has an Atheros card. The CPU is 64-bit so amd64 architecture Trisquel is recommended. You can consider upgrade its RAM, too.
Thanks. I do feel fortunate that my notebook has an Atheros card. I installed the full version in the beginning, but the 32-bit mini performs much faster with the resources I have. I intend on updating the RAM and possibly moving to an SSD. I have a Librebooted X200s with 8Gb of RAM and a 500Gb SSD, which is very fast.
> The last sentence "... switch to Linux and especially GNU/Linux" is erroneous. "Linux" is not an operating system. Even a distribution, like Ubuntu, contains lots of non-free software, it is still a GNU/Linux distribution, and it contains no less GNU components compared with libre distributions like Trisquel.
It is erroneous and if I could edit my original post, I would. I am aware that Linux refers to the kernel and GNU is "Not Unix" created by RMS. I'm also aware of The Hurd, which is yet to be completed, thus GNU/Linux. My comment was intended as encouragement for those wishing to try GNU/Linux to try Trisquel instead of a distro that is not fully libre. Thank you for the clarification.
> and everything else is freedom respecting
No proprietary microcode or device firmware?
> No proprietary microcode or device firmware?
Good question. The BIOS is factory. The machine is not listed as being libreboot compatible.
Both replies have made me critically think about my post, for which I am grateful.
Let my clarify my original post: Trisquel works perfectly with my legacy laptop. I do not see any failed scripts upon start-up or shutdown. It is not a fully libre machine as it still uses the factory BIOS. The main point of my post was to say thanks to the developers and the forum members who have helped me along the way and to encourage potential new GNU/Linux users to give Trisquel a try. :)