Trisquel 5.5 on a Dell Latitude D600
I am primarily a Fedora user but I am interested in using Trisquel to build deb programs for some of my Gambas programs.
I ran a live-cd version of 5.5 on my brother's old Dell Latitude D600 laptop and everything worked well except for it could not detect the graphics chip. What is the state of support for an old Radeon 9000 IGP in Trisquel?
Also, I noticed in the repository that it only listed Gambas 2. If need be I could build Gambas 3 on there myself, but I would prefer it if I did not have to. Any chance of the repos shipping Gambas 3?
I would also like to add that I was impressed with how you have handled the Fallback mode in 5.5. You accomplished with it much of what I attempted to do with a theme of my own, and even figured out several things I did not manage. Well played.
That should be deb packages, but anyway...
You had better try to make it in Ubuntu. The vast majority of Trisquel
packages are copied from Ubuntu's repositories.
I am not quite sure what you mean there.
With most programs they start in Debian which will in return make its way
down to Ubuntu and then eventually Trisquel.
The support for Radeons is quite bad. ATI/AMD doesn't care. You'll get slow
2d with all kind of glitches.
Trisquel is based on Ubuntu is based on Debian. Neither of these upstream
distros carry Gambas3 so it is not going to happen on Trisquel either. There
are not enough developers to make it happen.
I am a member!
The best way to solve these problems (particularly when you do not have the
skills to contribute) is financially. Consider making a donation or becoming
a member:
https://trisquel.info/en/member
https://trisquel.info/en/donate
We also donate 25% of the profits to Trisquel (we contribute to lots of other
projects as well) from sales derived from purchases through
http://libre.thinkpenguin.com/.
There is also the gift shop with Trisquel branded items (t-shirts, etc) which
helps support Trisquel (we have Trisquel Case badges at ThinkPenguin.com
though, not the below url):
I was under the impression that Gambas 3 was packaged by Ubuntu, just like it
is in Fedora and OpenSUSE. If it is not I can understand why it is not in the
repos, though as I said I can build it myself locally.
About the ATI/AMD comment, I know that AMD does actively develop free
software drivers, so saying they do not care is a bit much. What is the issue
with these may I ask?
Also, this is a Radeon 9000 we are talking about, so this has had free
drivers for almost tens years, long before AMD's current "Open Source
Strategy" and modern graphics initiatives. Why would this not be expected to
work?
The "radeon" driver, which is distributed under the GPL license, is free software... but requires additional proprietary firmware to actually provide some features such as 3D acceleration. That is why it does not work at its full potential with Linux-libre, which is 100% free. I am not sure but the old version of Linux (before Linux-libre was started) might already require such proprietary firmware. If so, the old card would not work at its full potential either with Linux-libre.
You had better try to make it in Ubuntu. The vast majority of Trisquel packages are copied from Ubuntu's repositories.
I am not quite sure what you mean there.
With most programs they start in Debian which will in return make its way down to Ubuntu and then eventually Trisquel.
The support for Radeons is quite bad. ATI/AMD doesn't care. You'll get slow 2d with all kind of glitches.
Trisquel is based on Ubuntu is based on Debian. Neither of these upstream distros carry Gambas3 so it is not going to happen on Trisquel either. There are not enough developers to make it happen.
I am a member!
The best way to solve these problems (particularly when you do not have the skills to contribute) is financially. Consider making a donation or becoming a member:
https://trisquel.info/en/member
https://trisquel.info/en/donate
We also donate 25% of the profits to Trisquel (we contribute to lots of other projects as well) from sales derived from purchases of computers/accessories/books/case badges/etc through http://libre.thinkpenguin.com/.
There is also the gift shop with Trisquel branded items (t-shirts, etc) which helps support Trisquel (we have Trisquel Case badges at ThinkPenguin.com though, not the below url):
I was under the impression that Gambas 3 was packaged by Ubuntu, just like it is in Fedora and OpenSUSE. If it is not I can understand why it is not in the repos, though as I said I can build it myself locally.
About the ATI/AMD comment, I know that AMD does actively develop free software drivers, so saying they do not care is a bit much. What is the issue with these may I ask?
Also, this is a Radeon 9000 we are talking about, so this has had free drivers for almost tens years, long before AMD's current "Open Source Strategy" and modern graphics initiatives. Why would this not be expected to work?
The "radeon" driver, which is distributed under the GPL license, is free
software... but requires additional proprietary firmware to actually provide
some features such as 3D acceleration. That is why it does not work at its
full potential with Linux-libre, which is 100% free. I am not sure but the
old version of Linux (before Linux-libre was started) might already require
such proprietary firmware. If so, the old card would not work at its full
potential either with Linux-libre.
I am a member!
AMD has not been as honest about its support for free software as is suggested. They pulled the wool over the communities eyes. It is not a free solution. What you get is a driver that wraps around non-free software. Part of the driver is at least free... but the solution is not. You can't rip out the non-free bits either. This is certainly not acceptable and isn't supported by Trisquel. NVidia hasn't been any better although there exists a project to reverse engineer the hardware to produce a free driver. As a result Trisquel supports this. We don't like AMD or NVidia's actions as neither are doing a good job (any) at supporting free software.
The good news is Intel's drivers are free and newer Intel graphics chipsets are competitive to NVidia's on the low end. The need isn't all that great. It would still be ideal if NVidia or AMD released a free solution though as not all games are going to play with lower end graphics hardware.
The good thing is 95% of people don't need anything more than what is currently available from Intel. In fact Intel's graphics chipsets may even be preferable. Intel's also got better (that is any in comparison) support for video acceleration. So it's not all bad.
On 05/14/2012 10:41 PM, name at domain wrote:
> AMD has not been as honest about its support for free software as is
> suggested. They pulled the wool over the communities eyes. It is not a
> free solution. What you get is a driver that wraps around non-free
> software. This is certainly not acceptable and isn't supported by
> Trisquel. NVidia hasn't been any better although there exists a
> project to reverse engineer the hardware to produce a free driver. As
> a result Trisquel supports this. We don't like AMD or NVidia's actions
> as neither are doing a good job (any) at supporting free software.
What about Intel video drivers, do they use some form of binary blob
that will affect its performance in Trisquel?
I am a member!
AMD has not been as honest about its support for free software as is
suggested. They pulled the wool over the communities eyes. It is not a free
solution. What you get is a driver that wraps around non-free software. This
is certainly not acceptable and isn't supported by Trisquel. NVidia hasn't
been any better although there exists a project to reverse engineer the
hardware to produce a free driver. As a result Trisquel supports this. We
don't like AMD or NVidia's actions as neither are doing a good job (any) at
supporting free software.