Trisquel 5.5 "Brigantia" beta images ready for testing

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Khany

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Development announcement: http://listas.trisquel.info/pipermail/trisquel-devel/2012-March/000578.html


The first beta images for the forthcoming 5.5 "Brigantia" release are
ready for download here: http://devel.trisquel.info/makeiso/iso/
This time the images came a little later than expected because the
amount of upstream changes -specially the move towards GNOME 3 and GTK3-
required a much larger effort than usual. They also required a lot of
compilation tests, those incomplete iso images that caused so much
speculation... But it was fun. :)

I'll right back to the list with every new iso that comes up for
testing. The known bug list is here (please do not translate it):
https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/brigantia-development

The planned release date is March 24; I'll be presenting the new
version at the 2012 LibrePlanet Conference in Boston:
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2012/Schedule

Let's get cracking with the bug fixing!

What's new

  • Based on Ubuntu 11.10
  • Linux-Libre 3.0.0
  • GNOME 3.2
  • Abrowser 10
  • LibreOffice 3.4.4

Known Bugs

  • The iso images are too big
  • The installer crashes right away
  • The main menu is not clean
  • The main menu shows an arrow on top of the triskelion
  • The menus are missing the icons
  • Orca does not work
  • Yelp's default page is missing
  • Gtk theme name is not selectable
  • Metacity should have composition enabled by default
  • The panel should be transparent

Screenshots

http://img705.imageshack.us/img705/7387/bri01.png

http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/2586/bri02.png

Test and enjoy!

mYself
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Almost finished downloading. The pictures are looking good. There are 32-bit and 64-bit images as well, both compiled today.

UPDATE: I just fixed the line on 'https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/brigantia-development', that said
"Alpha iso images: http://devel.trisquel.info/dagda/iso/" to
"Beta iso images: http://devel.trisquel.info/makeiso/iso/".

Dave_Hunt

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Hi,

I am a blind person who uses Trisquel 5.0 on his work-a-day system, with
the orca screen reader providing access to the desktop and applications,
using speech output. On learning that 5.5 beta was ready for testing, I
decided to have a look.

I tried running this image from a flash drive with 2 gb persistent
storage. After booting, I ran orca from the dialogue, accessed by a
press of 'alt+f2' from the desktop. Orca speaks through the initial
setup. After making my choices, I allow orca to log me out, then I log
back in. On session restart, orca is supposed to start speaking
automatically, but it does not. When I manually try starting orca, I
get no speech. The only time orca will speak is when forced to do its
initial setup. It seems, the Gnome accessibility support is missing
from this release or isn't set up correctly.

Thanks, and I look forward to testing the new release,

Dave

On 03/03/2012 07:25 AM, name at domain wrote:
> Almost finished downloading. The pictures are looking good. There are
> 32-bit and 64-bit images as well, both compiled today.
>

marioger
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What is the differences between Triskel ISO and Frisquel FSF ISO at 1.4Go?

libredrs

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Will I be able to upgrade from 5.0 to 5.5 without starting from scratch? What
will I need to do when 6.0 comes along?

How long will 5.0 receive support/updates after the 5.5 is released?

Thanks for your help.

libredrs

marioger
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Why don't stay on Gnome 2? This desktop doesn't look pretty!

Loic J. Duros
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On 03/03/2012 12:06 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Why don't stay on Gnome 2? This desktop doesn't look pretty!
Thought I'd give an opinion: I think Unity 3D and 2D is really good.
Also, a lot of the bugs I found in Unity 3D weren't there in 2D.

After much time using Unity I find the gnome 2 app menu difficult to
navigate compared to typing the name of the program you want to run in
Unity.

I like Gnome shell as well, not so much the Gnome 3 fall-back... Or at
least I certainly prefer Unity 2D to the fall-back. The fall-back feels
too much like a second thought to me.

In any case, whatever choice Trisquel makes, I'll be happy with it! :-)
People can install their own interface if they are not happy. I'd be the
first to install something else if I'm not happy, but criticizing
Trisquel or any other distribution for its default interface seems
counterproductive to me and those unsolvable debates always seem to hurt
a distribution... Does anybody share this point of view?

leny2010

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On 03/03/12 17:36, Loic J. Duros wrote:
> Thought I'd give an opinion: I think Unity 3D and 2D is really good.
>
> I like Gnome shell as well, not so much the Gnome 3 fall-back... Or at
> least I certainly prefer Unity 2D to the fall-back. The fall-back feels
> too much like a second thought to me.

I too like both Unity & Gnome 3 well enough. Given they're both young
and still in need of tweaking.

IMHO if we want to make significant inroads into a near monopoly it is
not enough to have something better but similar, bold steps that might
go wrong have to be made. Proprietary software vendors cannot replicate
free software's rate and diversity of evolution and that is a key
strength. We have no idea which of the desktops and window managers the
future will finally pick, for example it could be LXDE because millions
of young children become used to it from something like the Raspberry
Pi. The more candidates, and the more differentiated they are the better.

Unlike pets desktops are not for life. Loic is quite right, try a
different one if you're not happy. At the very least you'll have some
evidence of what you actually do use a desktop for. When I did I was
surprised to find that despite ~80% of my time being spent in Emacs
there was an awful lot in a modern desktop that I considered essential.
It was just in a lot of different little bits in the other 20%.

Leny

Khany

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>
> In any case, whatever choice Trisquel makes, I'll be happy with it!
> :-) People can install their own interface if they are not happy. I'd
> be the first to install something else if I'm not happy, but
> criticizing Trisquel or any other distribution for its default
> interface seems counterproductive to me and those unsolvable debates
> always seem to hurt a distribution... Does anybody share this point of
> view?
>
+1000000000000

Khany

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Because it isn't in the repositories? would haven't updates.

t3g
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I'm not so gung ho on the Gnome fallback, so I am going to hold onto the 4.0 LTS for a while. Looks, performance, and navigation wise it still doesn't come close to Gnome 2. When I do upgrade to 6.0, I will probably switch over to the LXDE based mini edition and run that and/or Unity 2d. From what I have seen with the Ubuntu 12.04 beta 1, Unity has really matured and the 2d version is pretty damn close to having all the features of the standard Unity.

I am hoping the era of Unity bashing ends soon. I can understand the hate for it with the Ubuntu 11.04 release, but Canonical has done really well in getting it stable. The progress of Unity has really leapfrogged Gnome Shell.

As for Khany's response, Unity 2d is in the Trisquel repos and will be updated since Trisquel's repos pretty much mirror the Ubuntu ones and takes out non-free software. Here's Unity 2d for example: http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel/pool/main/u/unity-2d/

grvrulz
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Unity2d has a major bug that renders ugly buttons in the titlebar for any theme other than Ambiance and Radiance. That is a real show stopper for me, but otherwise I like Unity-2d.

t3g
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Since Trisquel 5.0 has a black bottom panel and Trisquel 5.5 has a black panel in Gnome fallback, Ambience may be the closest since it has a black global menu bar.

With that said, Trisquel likes to use a silver Elementary style theme for its programs. If I go fully Ambience, then that makes everything have a black theme. Is there a way to mix both looks? Just be warned that I have no clue in how to edit themes, so it is just a brainstorm.

I know its not listed as a bug, but is there work to get the menu to be black and/or transparent like in older releases? It is currently white when the Trisquel icon is clicked in the lower left of the screen and would be nice if it matched the color of the bottom panel.

grvrulz
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I think all menus have the same class in gtk3 so it might not be possible, but still, I'm trying to make it black.

Nathan
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Can you add a panel background for the stable? I think it looks messy right now, and I had that issue in Ubuntu using GNOME Classic, but when I put a background, it looked smooth.

icarolongo
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I downloaded the Trisquel 5.5 iso(from March 6) and then installed "gnome-session"(package with gnome-shell and other dependencies).

It worked perfectly on my hardware (Intel Core i3, 4GB DDR3 RAM) and 1080p videos on Youtube HTML5.

Screenshots:

(desktop)
http://ompldr.org/vY3ljaQ

(YouTube with Sintel 1080p)
http://ompldr.org/vY3ljYw
http://ompldr.org/vY3ljZA

(activities)
http://ompldr.org/vY3ljaA
http://ompldr.org/vY3ljZQ
http://ompldr.org/vY3ljZg

(applications - abrowser, libreoffice)
http://ompldr.org/vY3ljZw

grvrulz
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you should really change your window-borders to the Trisquel ones. these look awful with the theme.

Dave_Hunt

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Hi, Gang!

My system for daily use is Trisquel 5.0, I18N Edition, on an Asus
netbook, that works very well, with a few minor annoyances. In my
eagerness for the 5.5 release, I downloaded the Beta image, dated
07-March, and am writing this email from this Beta, running as a live
system on a flash drive. I'm running the beta, with orca speech
providing accessibility; here are some impressions.

If lightdm is launched in the live image, orca does not talk during the
login. I just hit the 'enter' key, after what seems a suitable
interval, then, I get the startup sound; then orca starts, as one would
expect. I had no problems paging through the preferences dialogue, and
setting orca up to taste. Once I got orca the way I like, I did some
exploring of the desktop, menus, and bottom panel. I could move among
the panel items, menus, sub-menus, and desktop items, using the cursor
keys, again, with no trouble. Before attempting a wifi connection, I
created a default password keyring, launching seahorse from the menus,
rather than from the 'run' dialogue, as I normally might. This
application is fully accessible. With the keyring set up, I returned to
the bottom panel, located the nm aplet, expanded the menu, found my
access point, entered my key, and got a spoken notification of the
connection success. While on the panel, I checked my laptop battery
status. I could find no volume controls on the bottom panel. Is it
there but invisible?

Since I could not find the controls, I launched the gnome-control-center
app, and made keyboard shortcuts for setting volume, and launching my
browser. This seemed to work as expected. While in the control center,
I quickly set my time and date. This dialogue was very hard to use when
I was installing 5.0, much easier in 5.5.

I located and launched evolution mail, and tried to use it. The setup
dialogues are fully accessible, though orca is slow to echo keystrokes.
Once I set it up, I discovered that evolution's message lists and
bodies are not readable. What to do? Install thunderbird, of course.

For testing purposes, I tried using synaptic, then the add/remove
programs app. Orca will not speak in these apps, perhaps it will not
speak any gui apps that need root access? I opened a terminal and used
apt-get to install t-bird. This works perfectly!

Using abrowser and t-bird is flawless, at first glance, with more
testing to be done.

With t-bird and abrowser going, I turned to editing with gedit. When
gedit is set to wrap text at the display margin, long lines (those with
actual line breaks well past the margin) are read repeatedly, when
moving with the up and down arrow keys. I have to view current word or
character to find where the insert point really is. To work around
this, I set gedit not to wrap the display. This causes orca to read one
line per-press of up or down. I can interrupt speech with any key
press. Navigating and reading the file chooser dialogues is a bit
clumzy with orca. Far easier and quicker to type the full path.

Two final notes:

When pressing 'alt+tab', to switch among the running apps, orca does not
speak the name of the app that would get focus if I were to release the
keys (this is announced in 5.0). This is very inconvenient! Also, when
caps-lock is used as the orca 'modifier' key, the lock state gets passed
through to the focused app. To use the orca modifier, I have to tap the
key twice. This minor bug is in 5.0, too.

HTH,

Dave

On 03/07/2012 10:29 PM, name at domain wrote:
> you should really change your window-borders to the Trisquel ones. these
> look awful with the theme.

t3g
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The default fonts always seem too small to me. Here is what I end up changing them to:

Application font: Droid Sans 9
Document font: Droid Sans 9
Desktop font: Droid Sans 9
Window title font: Droid Sans Bold 9
Fixed width font: Droid Sans Mono 9

lamm
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Yes, the default fonts sizes are too small, so I've always had to increase them a point or two (and I have good vision!). And why not use "Subpixel smoothing (LCD)" as the default rendering setting? The "Best shapes" setting renders fonts blurry like OS X, which puts unnecessary strain on the eyes. And while I'm at it, I'll also suggest #000 as the default text color on input boxes. :)

Khany

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sphynx
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Khany, I didn't find any .md5 file for 20120311 images.

t3g
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Looking very good. Only sore spot from that picture is the volume applet in the lower right which isn't using the icon from previous releases. I'd also like to see the trashcan from 4.0 in this as well, but that was already expressed in this thread. Also, congrats on getting the ISO under 700 MB.

aloniv

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The method I described works here as well (if you install the .deb packages using "sudo dpkg -i"). See this image:
https://trisquel.info/files/Screenshot at 2012-03-16 11_02_05_0.png

aloniv

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The method I described works here as well (if you install the .deb packages
using "sudo dpkg -i"). See this image:
https://trisquel.info/files/Screenshot at 2012-03-16 11_02_05_0.png

sphynx
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Khany, I didn't find any .md5 file for 20120311 images.

t3g
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Looking very good. Only sore spot from that picture is the volume applet in
the lower right which isn't using the icon from previous releases. I'd also
like to see the trashcan from 4.0 in this as well, but that was already
expressed in this thread. Also, congrats on getting the ISO under 700 MB.

Khany

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Joined: 04/26/2011
marioger
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What is the differences between Triskel ISO and Frisquel FSF ISO at 1.4Go?

libredrs

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Will I be able to upgrade from 5.0 to 5.5 without starting from scratch? What will I need to do when 6.0 comes along?

How long will 5.0 receive support/updates after 5.5 is released?

Thanks for your help.

libredrs