What main problems, if any, have you found in transition to Trisquel?
Just out of interest, I had installed Debian. Had to use backports to get the latest kernel for correct display settings, which makes me uneasy as I don't really know what I'm doing (worried I'll break things with updates). But even then, the browser was still outdated and I had to install Libre Office manually. (plus the boot options were getting out of control). All up pretty untidy.
SO I ran the Live version of Trisquel again and note that not only is it running on a more up-to-date kernel, but the browser seems to work better. It looks like all the software I need is there - Libre Office, Gimp works fine, Inkscape, all off the Live USB. My Wacom tablet is mostly working though touch sensitivity doesn't seem quite right, but that's quite common.
USB devices all seem to work fine; wireless is a problem of course with the Lenovo but the old wireless dongle I have does the job.
So I think I just need to see if I'll be able to talk to the wireless printer. I can't think what else I need to test out to make sure I have all my bases covered. I hate it when a problem happens when I'm trying to meet a deadline or halfway through something important. Have you found any major issues? Tips on avoiding problems?
No issues I've ever experienced myself other than with the AMD integrated graphics controller (I solved that by buying the video card Think Penguin sells) and WiFi. The OS itself is solid.
Do of course test the printer. I don't know about printers myself, so I'll let someone else tell you about them.
My wireless and old printer don't work. Other than that, everything seemed to work fine.
I had been using mostly free software on Windows for around nine months before I decided to use GNU/Linux. So the transition was pretty smooth! :)
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I discover that the Intel WiFi card that came with my System76 Pan7 was
not free, so I just order a mini pcie card from
http://libre.thinkpenguin.com and it work perfectly.
Since I don´t like the two DE available as default, initially I install
Lxde and then Xfce which work after some tweaking, but at the end just
decide to do a netinstall.
As a side note:
Just by change, a week before installing Trisquel I bought an HP
deskjet-2050-j510 printer that happen to have free drivers so that was
defensively good news for me.
At the end the Mini Pcie card issue was not a problem, but rather just a
discovery on how free my laptop was.
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On 12-11-18 09:18 PM, Roberto Rodríguez wrote:
> I discover that the Intel WiFi card that came with my System76 Pan7 was
> not free, so I just order a mini pcie card from
> http://libre.thinkpenguin.com and it work perfectly.
Did you inform System76 of this? It's important you let them know.
[...]
F.
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I am a member!
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Thanks for the reminder, I will do that.
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I'm amused by System76's decision to ship non-free hardware with their systems.
I mean, if I need to install proprietary drivers on a GNU/Linux system, then I may as well buy a computer from Dell or HP. Why should I buy from System76? System76 are shooting themselves in the foot, and are missing the point of running GNU/Linux in the first place: freedom.
If they were serious about respecting their users freedom, they would be doing what Mr. Waid is doing at ThinkPenguin, i.e. shipping liberated hardware.
Fortunately, he is somewhat capitalizing on System76's incompetence, so all the more power to him.
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System76 doesn't care. There in it for the money. If we didn't care we would start selling laptops and desktops with various NVIDIA or ATI options. As it is we only offer one NVIDIA option on the desktop. And if we did change our position I can guarantee you it would lead to more money. There are a lot of gamers out there relative to free software advocates. Most people though just don't understand the technical issues and how it in particular applies to the average user.
And... as I've said before it is not an all or nothing situation. There are common benefits regardless of your position on free software. So even if you insist on offering such hardware you can still avoid it where there are no benefits (performance, etc). Even if they didn't care about the ethical situation they should care about the technical situation. The non-free drivers/firmware are causing problems. You can actually find a ton of users complaining about System76's (and others) support because the systems literally stop working.
The thing is you can't support what isn't free. Your dependence on non-free software that is maintained by another company prevents it. When they discontinue support your stuck in a hard position. It may not be reasonable for you to have to maintain something indefinitely. However it isn't right to use parts that essentially ensure that customers will have to upgrade at a later date.
It might not be designed to fail or designed to be end-of-life'd although that is the effect. Particularly on GNU/Linux where the development model relies on freedom. Anything less a problem.
I'll be the first to say I don't object to the “higher” prices. There are good reasons for it. Better quality hardware as an example. Additionally other examples exist. Generally don't see many of the configuration options (like Matte screens and such) on low end machines for instance. You'll see these once you climb up to the business class machines which are quite a bit more expensive. So higher priced hardware with lower specs is not really an issue if you compare it to other systems within the same class. Unfortunately try explaining that to your average “techy”. There are also other things people making such statements don't consider. For instance a laptop with a 1.5” thickness is going to be cheaper than something with a .8” thickness.
System76 will succeed. We on the other hand are going to make an actual dent in Microsoft and Apple's market share.
On 12-11-20 02:41 AM, name at domain wrote:
> I'm amused by System76's decision to ship non-free hardware with their
> systems.
>
> I mean, if I need to install proprietary drivers on a GNU/Linux
> system, then I may as well buy a computer from Dell or HP. Why should
> I buy from System76? System76 are shooting themselves in the foot, and
> are misses the point of running GNU/Linux in the first place: freedom.
I don't know. You may have found about Trisquel or about System76
shipping non-free components too late.
I think it's more useful to at least have a current customer -someone
that paid money and has S76's attention- relay the fact that they
*could* ship freely-supported components.
>
> If they were serious about respecting their users freedom, they would
> be doing what Mr. Waid is doing at ThinkPenguin, i.e. shipping
> liberated hardware.
>
> Fortunately, he is somewhat capitalizing on System76's incompetence,
> so all the more power to him.
Who said they were or won't be? Have you asked them? Do you know for a
fact they can't/won't? Until you ask them or they are invited to
participate here, it's futile to go into such endless, fruitless
discussions, speculating for the sake of it.
I'd welcome some competition for ThinkPenguin, so maybe actual customers
of System 76 (which seem to be more than zero here) could trigger that.
Cheers,
F.
--
Fabián Rodríguez
http://fsf.magicfab.ca
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>Who said they were or won't be?
Take a look at their laptops.
They all ship with non-free Intel wireless chipsets.
I don't think this is speculation.
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Back in March, 2010 when I bought my System76 laptop, the term proprietary was totally alien to me.
They just care to support Ubuntu and no other linux distro, the pan7 came with a dedicated ATI Radeon card, wifi Intel mini-pcie card, Bluetooth and camera, all proprietary, plus their own System76 drivers, but little I knew about all that.
Two years pass until I meet the good people of Radioñú and their irc channel as Cogito (my nick there), where I heard about freedom and Trisquel for the first time and rest is history. Thanks Radioñú.
Regarding System76, I will let then know how I feel about freedom and their PC´s but unless they do a 180° they just lost my business.
Roberto Rodríguez
I found that using free software on Windows before I made the full switched to GNU/Linux really helped me out.
The only problem I had was with a Broadcom wireless card on two laptops (Dell Inspiron 1525 15" bought in 2008 and Macbook 5.1 13" bought in 2009).
The printer works fine (HP Deskjet 3845 bought in 2006).
Unfortunately the scanner does not works (HP Scanjet 4670 bought in 2005). I need the OS X or Windows for work with this. But it is for all distros because don't has a driver (free or non-free) for GNU/Linux.
hmm scanner might be a problem, it's an essential tool for me. I have two all-in-one printers of different brands with scanners... I hope one of them works!
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As far as printers / scanners go you want an HP all-in-one inkjet. They are not all free software friendly although a lot of them are. HP just went through and replaced everything so you won't find anything that works with Trisquel 5.5 or 6 on store shelves. We did acquire a significant amount of stock though. We actually have three models which will work. One is just a basic injet printer. One has everything imaginable (wifi, usb, ethernet, scanner, fax, copy, etc). We also have a new model without the wireless for the all-in-one. It isn't listed yet (one of many items which we have that isn't on the site yet.. no time.. if you need it the printer is about $30 less without wifi... just send an email...)... And all of these work with Trisquel 5.5 and 6 (and older releases- unsure about the LTS at this point. I think the answer is no. We do have an all-in-one which is also unlisted if you need that for the last LTS release).
HP has excellent documentation as well on its printers although figuring it out requires a bit of knowledge. I posted a book on how to do it (this is a joke- it did take a good 10 minutes to detail all the different information you need to look at and how to look it up though) on the forums not that long ago as part of a rant on free software and the need to purchase freedom friendly hardware.
If you have something specific you want to know about because of a feature let me know. I can figure it out. Takes just a few minutes for me to look everything up.
> We also have a new model without the wireless for the all-in-one. It isn't
> listed yet (one of many items which we have that isn't on the site yet.. no
> time..
What's this?
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/hp-all-one-printer-fax-copy-print-scan-gnu-linux
It matches your description perfectly and has been listed for weeks.
I'm in Australia, it wouldn't be economical to ship an entire printer but thanks for the thought.
Maybe there should be a separate 'buying hardware' thread with other retailers invited to participate and enlighten themselves.
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Australian customers are pretty easy to handle usually. Despite being so far out of the way US and Australian post are reliable and the shipping relatively cheap. Time wise it isn't terrible. A slight bit longer than shipping across the United States using UPS ground (a common shipping option in the US). Even with laptops it's not bad because the prices are higher within Australia (my only thought on why that would be is there is less competition). In fact Australians have it made because they aren't taxed on imports under $1,000 AUD. From what I can tell your better off ordering from overseas than locally.
The lightest printers are heavy reletive to the value though so it may not be somthing you would want to order from us at the moment.
That said.. though... the lightest printers are heavy relative to the value so it may not be something you would want to order from us at the moment as we don't have a local AU warehouse.
A LOT !
But that didn't turn me away from Free Software at all :D That made me fight more and more ! And my problems was :
- Horrible sound in Trisquel 5.5 (all of 4 computers)
- No Free drivers for Wireless (3 of 4 computers)
- Problems rendering the GPU (1 of 4 Computers, ironically the same with the good Wireless).
- Several freezes (after suspending) (2 of 4 computers)
And I don't remember anything more for now... It is already a lot and can be a real handicap sometimes. But I value my freedom too much... I didn't change to Free Software just because of the idea to be honest... I switched because the "bad" from non-free software happened to me. The need for a developer to use something that he can't share, the need for a user to change a piece of code since the original developer don't want to give support any more, or simply, the need for a student to be able to not be controlled on every word he writes or every step he makes... this is why I turned to this places, to this idea, to this way of life (that I now cherish totally). This is also why, even if anyone proposed me a lot of money, I wouldn't accept the change and I'm willing to fight for this until I can't any more :D.
So yes... those where my problems xD
My main problem is, that it is hard to join in conversations about how annoying the latest non-free OS is.
I just have to smile and try to remember wasting my time all those years ago.
For you my dear friend :D -->
heh heh heh *nice one*
Main issue for me is poor support of video card (AMD 6670), which is only supported by VESA driver, which, in turn, does not allow to change screen proportions to anything but 4:3 and 5:4.
Other then that, Trisquel provides enough power to watch videos, listen to music, type, surf etc.
I had a pleasant surprise yesterday - I was 'killing time' away from the house so used a HUWAI mobile broadband. I'd downloaded the driver to the windows partition and instructions for Debian installation expecting to have trouble with it as I had previously, but Trisquel identified it immediately and presented me with connection dialogue, no trouble at all. So that was great.
Another added bonus of *nix - I was able to access my old Mac drive without third-party software.
Only thing I'm finding tricky at the moment is my old USB card reader. It's a problem on Windows too.