The default kernel is buggy, too old and unmaintained.

Hi,

After installing Trisquel with trisquel_7.0_amd64.iso, which is linked from the download page I ended up with a 3.13.0-128-generic kernel.

According to kernel.org, it is unmaintained.

According to wikipedia :

The release initially included Linux kernel 3.13, but this was updated to 4.2 with the point release of 14.04.4 on 18 February 2016.[194][202]
The final point release, 14.04.5, provided the latest Linux kernel and graphics stacks from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. Point release 14.04.5 was the final one for 14.04 LTS.[203]

So we several options to choose from, and they are already in Trisquel repositories.

Trisquel has the following kenrels available in its repositories:

• The 4.4 from xenial
• The 4.2 from wily
• The 3.19 from vivid
• The 3.16 from utopic
• The 3.13 from thrusty

Only the 4.4 from xenial and the 3.16 from utopic are maintained by the kernel community (kernel.org).

However the installer:

• Uses an old and unmaintained (probably the 3.13) kernel, this might causes booting problems with the installer.
• Installs an old and unmaintained kenrel (3.13), this then might causes issues with the installed distro

Then after doing the updates, newer kernels are not installed, and only 3.13 versions are proposed for update and installation.

Here's how kernel development work:

• Changes are sent to maintainers and end up being merged upstream
• At some point such changes makes it into the newer release, but important bugfixes are also backported to the maintained longterm versions of Linux.

So by using a maintained version we end up having some of the most important bugfixes.

And sometimes it can be quite problematic, for instance with recent Coreboot versions, on a Thinkpad X200, with a 3.13 kernel, the computer has a black screen during boot and after because the GPU crashes at every boot (but not reboot):

[drm] Driver supports precise vblank timestamp query.
[drm] failed to find VBIOS tables
vgaarb: device changed decodes:  PCI:0000:00:02.0,olddecodes=io+mem,decodes=io+mem:owns=io+mem
[drm] GPU crash dump saved to /sys/class/drm/card0/error
[drm] GPU hangs can indicate a bug anywhere in the entire gfx stack, including userspace.
[drm] Please file a _new_ bug report on bugs.freedesktop.org against DRI -> DRM/Intel
[drm] drm/i915 developers can then reassign to the right component if it's not a kernel issue.
[drm] The gpu crash dump is required to analyze gpu hangs, so please always attach it.
i915: render error detected, EIR: 0x00000010
i915:   IPEIR: 0x00000000
i915:   IPEHR: 0x80e00720
i915:   INSTDONE_0: 0xffffffff
i915:   INSTDONE_1: 0xbfffffff
i915:   INSTDONE_2: 0x00000000
i915:   INSTDONE_3: 0x00000000
i915:   INSTPS: 0x8001e032
i915:   ACTHD: 0x0000358c
i915: page table error
i915:   PGTBL_ER: 0x00000001
[drm:i915_report_and_clear_eir] *ERROR* EIR stuck: 0x00000010, masking
[drm:init_ring_common] *ERROR* render ring initialization failed ctl 0001f001 head 0000358c tail 00000000 start 00003000
[drm:i915_driver_load] *ERROR* failed to init modeset
i915: probe of 0000:00:02.0 failed with error -5

Denis.