Trisquel v gNewSense
A quick driver question.
After a few days of using Trisquel I thought I'd give gNewSense a try. With Trisquel everything on the target laptop works out of the box - on gNewSense there's no wireless, no ethernet and the screen resolution is wrong and not changeable.
I'm somewhat confused, is this because gNewSense is not done properly? Or because Trisquel is using non-free drivers? Or because Trisquel is more up to date and thus has better drivers? Or none of the above?
>Or because Trisquel is more up to date and thus has better drivers?
This is plausible.
Have you tried asking for help on the gNewSense forums? http://gnewsense.org/Support?action=show&redirect=Main%2FGetHelp#Online_Community_Help
I assure you that Trisquel does not use non-free drivers. I managed to reproduce all possible problems which could arise from lack of firmware on a single computer in my school: no ethernet, no wireless, black screen after GRUB (640x480 if I pass nomodeset to linux). Got to love h-node, eh?
gnewsense is too obsolete to work => use Trisquel.
Hello,
my recommendation: just stay with trisquel and all is fine :-)
The "old" GNS is too obsolete, like krofna said.
Did you try the "gns 3 beta"?
I had it another way, gns first (incl. being offline for a while, had to get sakis3g and stuff, no proper browser (afair)).
Beta is pretty OK. I like how they stay with gnome2, BUT... AFAIK there is no(!) SMP support (this is K.O. criteria, for me at least), so I dloaded latest stable trisquel and everything is just fine, worked out-of-the-box and only few minor modifications had to be done manually.
(wireless (atheros), some mobile broadband modems and stuff., impressive "user experience, compact etc)
Just perfect and 100% free. If a device does not run, perhaps there is no appropriate open-source driver/firmware available.
Enjoy it!
Regards,
...
Thanks for that.
Yes, gone back to Trisquel.
I have, whether through accident, providence or serendipity, ended up with 2 machines, bought when I didn't care about free software, both of which work perfectly with free software.
The penguin in the sky he loves me.
>Or because Trisquel is using non-free drivers?
Trisquel doesn't have any nonfree drivers.
You tried gNewSense 3 released in the last month? This is based on Debian 6 Squeeze from 2011.
Trisquel 6 Toutatis is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Precise from 2012.
Both is 100% free, without proprietary software, drivers and firmware.
Assuming you're already using gNewSense 3.0...
(I don't know the technical details of what happens, in terms of hardware recognition and drivers auto-installation and auto-configuration, for each of the mentioned free distros. And, I don't know how much, and which, of each parent distro's software is imported to their free equivalents, in this particular area. But...)
I suspect that, it may be because
(1) Trisquel is based on Ubuntu, and
(2) gNewSense is based on Debian.
Concerning the non-free distros*,
Ubuntu has always been, since 2005, for me, the only distribution that made everything work "out of the box". While Debian has always been a distro that just isn't able to match Ubuntu, in this capability...
(If Trisquel is importing enough of the software used for installation from Ubuntu, and if gNewSense is using Debian's software for that...)
---
* (and, maybe, excluding /only/ the last version of Debian)
I am a member!
I tried both Trisquel and gNewSense, but couldn't get gNewSense to work with my video card and monitor resolution. Being able to get Trisquel to work was what made the decision for me.
gNewSense is really only useful if you have a MIPS computer (like the one RMS has), since Trisquel only supports x86. Like others have said, it's old (though not quite outdated yet; it still keeps upstream support for another half a year or so). I don't know the version numbers or anything, but it might be comparable in terms of how old its software is to Trisquel 4.0.
Could be due to the kernel. Trying a new version might help. There is information and instructions on jxself.org/linux-libre
The thing that confused me was that Wheezy works perfectly on the same machine.
I was hoping that gnewsense would work as well as Trisquel as I really don't like Canonical.
When Ubuntu first came out I thought it was about the best thing I'd seen on a computer and pushed it and wrote about it and praised it to whoever would stand still long enough to listen. I installed 10.10 on a couple of computers in a residential home, overwriting Windows in the process. I left a single text file on the desktop explaining "why the computer looks different" and the residents took to it without a hitch.
Then Canonical went for Unity, a singularly stupid decision, which they made worse by sneering at people who disagreed, at which point I fled in horror and the rest, as they say, is history.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying, when I can have a distro that isn't Ubuntu based I'll be even happier than I am now.
The dream distro for me would be 100% kosher Slackware.
>The dream distro for me would be 100% kosher Slackware.
Dragora probably gets closest
http://www.dragora.org/en/index.html
( FSF approved, naturally http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html )
Oh. my. goodness.
Squeals in delight.
Thankyou.
"The thing that confused me was that Wheezy works perfectly on the same machine."
As far as I know, gnewsense 3.0 is based on squeeze and not on wheezy;
This might be the explanation.
It would appear, after having tried every distro on the FSF list, other than BLAG, which is all but dead as a project, that Trisquel is the best looking and easiest to configure. With Cinnamon running instead of Gnome3 it's positively delightful.
I am a member!
gNewSense 3 (or at least what I would consider important parts thereof) is very buggy on systems which are only using free software friendly chipsets. That is there are non-hardware related components that have issues which are not included, but if installed, won't work anyway. I would suggest for the majority who are here to stick with Trisquel. If your comfortable with the terminal, want to completely eliminate non-free software, have got the right MIPS hardware, etc gNewSense 3.0 might be one of or your only options. Trisquel doesn't include non-free software although only runs on architectures where there is some non-free microcode.
That may not sound that flattering although it is what it is. If your a technical user the other option may be Parabola GNU/Linux. It takes a lot of energy to install.. so.. depending on how much free time you have or don't have it may not be a great option either.
I like to say Trisquel works good enough for those determined to eliminate near all non-free software, are at least somewhat tech savvy, and willing to put up with quite a bit of stuff not working (on the web mostly).
If you don't fit into one of those categories there is still a lot you can do to help move things forward. Donations / memberships to FSF, Trisquel, etc. Only buying free software friendly hardware, etc.
When you say
"Trisquel doesn't include non-free software although only runs on architectures where there is some non-free microcode"
is the non-free microcode referring to the BIOS?
Hello. What an interesting thread :)
I just tried gNewSense 3 and it runs fine on my hardware, but there is one catch not related to the hardware but still very painful and important - NO recent web browser. The problem is that gns3 is not compatible with IceCat 17 which itself is fairy recent and usable (I still use year-old Firefox 17.0.x ESR on Windows machines with no problems). I can browse FSF, GNU, Trisquel or Gnewsense home pages using gns3 default browser (Mozilla 3.5 branch from 2009) but I would not dare to go somewhere else using that. I am well aware that even 3.6 Mozilla branch is already too much outdated for doing anything "mainstream" on the Internet.
I am an enthusiast of old things in computing. I am Amiga guy. I have dedicated DOS gaming machine equipped with Soundblaster16 and S3 Virge cards. And I am using XP where Windows is absolutely necessary.
But I also know that recent web browser is a must for a distro to be practically usable.
On gns forum I just found an suggestion about backport of Iceweasel 17 for Debian 6 being available but ... maybe just sticking to Trisquel 6 would be just easier. So while I am a bit sentimental toward gNewSense and I am able to install non-standard things into /opt directory, I must say now that I DO NOT recommend to use gNewSense 3.
Sorry for having to say such a thing :(