First development alpha iso images of Trisquel 8.0 "Flidas"

Right on!!! Gracias, Rubén.

Thanks for releasing this testing live image! On a running instance, I added the accessibility-dev ppa and installed Orca screen reader. To do this, I, first, installed and started a service called espeakup; this gives console speech and screen review. Once the accessibility packages were installed and running, I did a little exploring. The desktop, menus, and a few applications appear to work as expected, but i I couldn't get to the bottom panel, where I'd expect volume, network applet, etc... This is a very-early build and we have high hopes for it!

"We can also add some new programs, but keeping in mind not to bloat the
system. We do not preinstall two applications that do the same thing."

I'd love to see SolveSpace included:

https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/SolveSpace

http://solvespace.com/index.pl

A GPLv3, stable, tiny yet powerful, easy to use parametric 3D CAD. Much different than FreeCAD (beta stage, complicated).

I am so excited for this!

If you wanna report bug, here is not the right place. report them and then then add them here:

https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/flidas-release-issues

¡¡¡Muchas gracias Rubén!!!
:D

I tried de LIVEISO, is very fast!
Some problems with Abiword.

This is a blessing
Thanks quidam (and all the team of course)

I Thank You but I will rate you a minus because you took for ever to talk to us,Is about time we get this update Dammit i STILL want TO DIGITALLY commit feces and urine in your desk for been late...Thank You again..

Great news indeed.

Hi all,

First of all thanks for the pre-release and the lots of work. I would like to propose some apps I like, and I think they are practical to have in a basic install. It's just a suggestion so do whatever you like...

simple system things:
mc
iptraf
mtr

filezilla?

lolcat :P

for graphical apps I see it in gnu systems they usually like inkscape and gimp I think it's a good basic combo, but if we can I would add darktable hugin and mat. I think mat (mat-gui) is essential when we post pictures somewhere, cleaning private info from pictures can be a good idea... Darktable and hugin is not so general user thing I know, but Darktable can be great if you have a digital camera. just a not that gv always opens all the pdf and ps documents.....

for audio things:
audacity came to tails for example and I can see the point, if you need to make audiorecording, cut it, conversion it's fine... I would put in fmit, which is the best tuning application I thing, 'coz I have many musicians around me.

vlc or smplayer would be great...

if we have an option keepassx would be fantastic

many many thanks for you work
cheers,
petergk

See 2016 isn't so bad after all. Thanks to everyone involved! I will give my Xmas donation a bit earlier this year. ;) Would have done it anyway.

Audacity and vlc are good multimedia apps for the devfault. Icedove and abrowser for web, and pidgin for messaging. I'll likely come up with more app suggestions.

I think pidgin could get the small otr extension/plugin.... otherwise I would say almost all of it is well represented in seamonkey.

Audacious loooked like a good light audio player what do you think?

Thank you so much Ruben. Will we be able to use this alpha ISO to upgrade from Trisquel 7? Will it automatically update to the latest version of Trisquel 8 once installed?

The current alpha has no installer.

Hooray for flidas. The live looks nice on a VM.

-Should suggestions and bugs and opinions and all be a separated thread / wikipage?

-We probably wanna rename "caja" more intuitively as "File manager" or "Caja File Manager" like all the rest of the programs.

Some ppl have already made proposals for software so I'll do that as well.
-Keepassx and seahorse for passwords and GPG keys.
-Xarchiver / squeeze for archive manager! Many great distros lack a GUI archive manager.
-vlc for all media - video and music.
-evince for pdf's.
-Pidgin+OTR

If someone doesn't like the default desicions, there's always apt-get install:)

edit: those of you who rely on orca or other visual aid, which do you use?

I am not sure about evince.... edit: gnu gv for pdf viewing?

Edit:
Simple scan?
xournal?
mypaint?

ehh forget the last two :D

Where is the official package list for Trisquel Flidas?

I only found a unofficial copy here: https://paste.ubuntu.ir/ieim

I think the most important package to add is icedove because some icecat add-ons are designed to be run on icedove too.

Exciting news this new Trisquel Mate version :-) I couldn’t use Trisquel 7 Gnome with my graphic card but Trisquel Mate should be fine. (https://trisquel.info/fr/forum/nvidia-fx5200-geforce-7200-gs) This card was perfectly allright with Debian but it became a little flaky (due to old age perhaps)
Mate looks really good — tried it some time ago as Live Ubuntu Mate.

I currently run Debian Jessie (*no nonfree stuff*), so I’m a good candidate for Trisquel, though I love Debian (all free).

I now have a new graphic card NVIDIA Corporation GT218 [GeForce 210], which is a bit buggy with Nouveau and kernel 3.16.0-4-amd64. No idea if this is because of the driver or the kernel. I’ll try to find out (it works fine with Lubuntu, which doesn’t help me much since Lubuntu has nonfree blobs).

I would suggest using Iceweasel as a name for Abrowser, along with the iceweasel logo, now that Debian can use the name Firefox and nolonger uses the name Iceweasel or its logo. A good name and logo would be quite welcome, IMHO. Trisquel always has lovely graphics (the Triquel logo, the Trisquel desktop background images, along the years).

cheers

Hi,

Thanks a lot for all the work!

Would it be possible to make a netinstall image that consists in only a kernel image and an initramfs. Debian has such images. The goal is to be able to install Trisquel from coreboot/libreboot with SeaBIOS and iPXE. The kernel and initramfs also need to have associated sha1sum/sha256sum/gpg signatures, to be able to verify them. Should I bugreport to ask for that feature?

Denis.

Hi,

Many ATI GPUs now work again with more recent linux-libre, however I could only add the GPU families that I could test.
It would be nice to have trisquel8 have decent support for radeon GPUs again.
This will not enable 3D acceleration but provide many other benefits.
Right now on system with BIOS, Trisquel uses the VESA driver for such GPU which:
- Often doesn't properly support the display's native resolution.
- Is very very slow
- Doesn't handle multi-screens

I only tested 2 GPU families (an evergreen GPU, and an r600 one), so in order to make the radeon driver work on trisquel 8,
it would be nice to cover all the families.

== Required files ==
To test you need to download and verify linux from kernel.org:
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.8.12.tar.xz
https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.8.12.tar.sign
Then you need to also download and verify the linux-libre deblob script here:
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/4.8.12-gnu/deblob-4.8
http://linux-libre.fsfla.org/pub/linux-libre/releases/4.8.12-gnu/deblob-4.8.sign
After downloading and verifying the files with gpg, unpack linux-4.8.12.tar.xz

== Background information on the problem ==
In the deblob script there is the following:
# Something like this might work on other radeon cards too. If you
# have such cards, please give it a try, and report back either way,
# so that we can make more cards work, or at least add comments so
# that others don't waste their time trying them again.
clean_sed '
/r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);/,/}/ s,return r;,/*(DEBLOBBED)*/,
' drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/r600.c 'enable blobless activation'
clean_sed '
/r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);/,/}/ s,return r;,/*(DEBLOBBED)*/,
' drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/evergreen.c 'enable blobless activation'

Theses are files, in the linux kernel sources that you just unpacked:
drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/r600.c
drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/evergreen.c
Theses files are part of the radeon driver and contains C code.
Here we are interested in the lines that looks that:
if (!rdev->me_fw || !rdev->pfp_fw || !rdev->rlc_fw) {
r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);
if (r) {
DRM_ERROR("Failed to load firmware!\n");
return r;
}
}

We didn't deblob the Linux sources yet, so the code I just pasted is from unmodified Linux sources.
The code shown above will try to load a firmware with the "r600_init_microcode" function.

If we didn't add the following in linux-libre deblob script:
clean_sed '
/r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);/,/}/ s,return r;,/*(DEBLOBBED)*/,
' drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/r600.c 'enable blobless activation'

The "r600_init_microcode" would return an error with linux-libre, and also with unmodified linux kernels
when the non-free firwmare is lacking.

That error is then propagated, and at the end, it makes the radeon driver refuse to load.
Since the radeon driver refuses to load, the computers with such GPU ends up using the VESA driver instead,
on computer with BIOSes, which has the issues that were mentioned at the begining of the post.
This is because "VESA" is provided by the BIOS, which doesn't need fancy graphics...

If we run the clean_sed on the C code that we pasted before, it changes the C code in that:
if (!rdev->me_fw || !rdev->pfp_fw || !rdev->rlc_fw) {
r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);
if (r) {
DRM_ERROR("Failed to load firmware!\n");
/*(DEBLOBBED)*/
}
}

Here, if loading the firmware fails, it will not return any error,
and only print "Failed to load firmware!" in the kernel log, which can
be printed with the dmesg command.

So here the clean_sed looked for "r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);" in drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/r600.c
and replaced the "return r;" by a comment ( /*(DEBLOBBED)*/ ).

Theses are probably the only two thing that may change for a different GPU family, that is:
- The driver file (drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/r600.c)
- The C code that clean_sed looks for: "r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);"

== Deblob script modification ==
So we now need to find, for our GPU family, the driver file, and that C code that clean_sed looks for.

You need to start by identifying the GPU familiy that you have.
https://wiki.freedesktop.org/xorg/RadeonFeature/#decoderringforengineeringvsmarketingnames can help for that.

Once it is done, in drivers/gpu/drm/radeon/[1], there are many .c files, some have names like .c, like
r600.c or ni.c (ni is Northern Islands). Try them first, since they have higher probability to have the code
we are looking for. You can also grep for _init_microcode if you know how to use grep.

The code that we are looking for looks like that:
if (!rdev->me_fw || !rdev->pfp_fw || !rdev->rlc_fw) {
r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);
if (r) {
DRM_ERROR("Failed to load firmware!\n");
return r;
}
}

Try to look for "r = _init_microcode(rdev);" in the files you are looking at.

Note that in the same file might have several "r = _init_microcode(rdev);"
in r600.c we have for instance "r = r600_init_microcode(rdev);" and "r = ni_init_microcode(rdev);"

Also, the same "_init_microcode(rdev);" can be found in several files, as it is the case
with ni_init_microcode (ni.c, evegreen.c).

Since the same _init_microcode can be found in different files, try to at the file name, at the kernel logs (available with the "dmesg" command)
to get some hints as if it matches your GPU family.

At the end of the day, you will need to try the change. To do that:
- modify the deblob script
- deblob the linux sources
- Find a proper configuration file (.config) for that kernel version and use it.
- build the image, "make deb" can be used to generate packages for it.
- Before installing the packages, make sure you know what you are doing and can boot on another kernel if this one doesn't boot.
- Also make sure you know how to uninstall the new packages you will install.
- Install the packages.
- install the Xorg radeon driver (xf86-video-radeon)
- boot that kernel. It will probably still use the vesa driver at that point.
- run the "sudo modprobe radeon" command, and see if your display still works.
- If your display still works, enjoy the driver and check the available resolutions,
check if multi-screen is working, etc...
- Send a patch to the linux-libre mailing list if you know how to send patches
- If you don't know how to send patches, send a mail (to the liunx-libre mailing list) explaning that you did the test, if it worked or didn't work,
and for references purposes, how you did the test (list of commands, GPU used, etc)

== Trisquel 8 modifications ==
Trisquel 7 blacklisted the radeon driver, this should probably be removed.
With recent kernels, if the GPU wasn't tested and added to linux-libre like explained above,
the radeon driver will not load.

References:
-----------
[1]drivers/gpu/radeon/ can also be seen online at:
https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux-stable.git/tree/drivers/gpu/drm/radeon?id=refs/tags/v4.8.12

Denis.

Hi again,

Some Broadcom WiFi chips are compatible with the Openfwwf firmware.
According to http://netweb.ing.unibs.it/~openfwwf/index.php , theses are the:
- 4306 (pcmcia cards probably not supported though)
- 4311(rev1)
- 4318 (pcmcia cards probably not supported though)
- 4320

Since I lent the card, I don't have it with me and cannot test, but I vaguely remember that messing with the kernel module parameters might be necessary to make it work correctly.

The same page has the following comments:
does not implement RTS/CTS handshake procedure, must be disabled on module load
does not work with hardware cryptography acceleration, use without encryption!
does not work with dot11 QoS, must be disabled on module load

On parabola on 4.8.10 there is the following parameters[1]:
parm: bad_frames_preempt:enable(1) / disable(0) Bad Frames Preemption (int)
parm: fwpostfix:Postfix for the .fw files to load. (string)
parm: hwpctl:Enable hardware-side power control (default off) (int)
parm: nohwcrypt:Disable hardware encryption. (int)
parm: hwtkip:Enable hardware tkip. (int)
parm: qos:Enable QOS support (default on) (int)
parm: btcoex:Enable Bluetooth coexistence (default on) (int)
parm: verbose:Log message verbosity: 0=error, 1=warn, 2=info(default), 3=debug (int)
parm: pio:Use PIO accesses by default: 0=DMA, 1=PIO (int)
parm: allhwsupport:Enable support for all hardware (even it if overlaps with the brcmsmac driver) (int)

References:
-----------
[1]from modinfo b43

Denis.

Please make sure to remove Suspend and Hibernate if they don't work again.

I made a script for you to do it: https://trisquel.info/en/issues/19927

Thanks so much to Reuben and everyone else who has worked on this alpha release. I look forward to testing whatever is the latest test version when I get back home after summer.

Radeon support as described above!

http://e08c79d56900ae1d.paste.se/

Install on trisquel8 flidas