Using Trisquel 100% of the Time

I use Trisquel full time on my desktop. I bought a different motherboard
(and, as a consequence, a new CPU and new RAM) for it to be as free software
friendly, as possible. Before that, I had to cope with slow performance even
without compiz effects.

Now I can't play a number of games that are too advanced to run with the
integrated Intel X4500 graphicschip.

However, it's not just inconvenience you have to go through! I was able to
easily do a podcast for work. Recorded video with ffmpeg, recorded sound with
Audacity, did the editing and rendering with PiTiVi. My colleges did podcasts
as well and mine had quite high video quality, maybe the best out of all. Did
all that while booting from a live USB-stick.

I don't use Trisquel, however, I do use Parabola, another fully free
GNU/Linux distribution that tries to stick to the Arch philosphy of Keeping
It Simple, while being 100% Free Software.

I got lucky with my computer when it comes to support for free drivers,
especially with the GPU. I use an nVidia GeForce GTS 250, which works
extremely well with the free nouveau drivers. Both 2D and 3D acceleration
work.

I also got really lucky with my laptop, an Alienware M11x R1. All I had to do
was replace the internal wi-fi card with an Atheros-based one (the default
was a Broadcom BCM43224 which needed non-free firmware), and everything ended
up working. I have bumblebee and bbswitch set up so that everything runs off
the Intel GPU, except for games. When a game is launched, or anything that I
think could run better with a better GPU, I'm able to run bumblebee's
optirun, which starts an X server on the nVidia GPU with the free nouveau
drivers and offloads the game or whatever to it, and transfers it back to the
Intel GPU which is hosting the display.

The only thing that is still preventing me from using Parabola full-time is
that I require Adobe Flash for my online school, which has an interface that
is entirely in Flash. For that, I still have Windows installed. It'd be nice
to be able to get rid of it once and for all. Hopefully with my next PC
build, I will be able to switch to full-time Parabola and be 100% free. I
also don't know what I'm going to do about quite a bit of games that I had
before I cared about free software. I could probably abandon most, but
there's still a certain game about crafting and mines that I still really
like to play whenever I have to boot back into Windows. I'm hoping the few
projects that have sprung up as open source replacements (Minetest, which is
missing quite a lot of stuff, and Terasology, which currently has a non-free
texture pack) will become comparable, so I can have some entertainment as
well when I'm able to do the 100% freedom switch.

I use only Trisquel on my Eee 1005HA and it is my primary computer. I also
have a desktop with a ATI card but I have no 3D acceleration on it. For that
reason, I distro-hop sometimes, but mainly between Ubuntu, Trisquel and
Debian (I will use my desktop to develop 3D applications that's why I need
acceleration). But no distributions beyond the scope of apt.

As for needed tasks, all I do in my netbook is read PDF's (study), browse the
web and do some code in Haskell. I have set up Evolution to download and
erase e-mails from server so I can read locally. My mother also uses this
computer with Trisquel to read and send emails through Evolution (webmail is
too resource hogging for this little machine), and watch some flash vids on
the web (related to her work) which luckily work with flashvideoreplacer. So
yeah we have no problem with Trisquel on this machine.

I do not use Trisquel in all of my spare time, but at least half of it. Since
2 weeks ago Trisquel has become my new personal workspace for my graphics
hobbies. Here I am currently in the process of learning the GIMP and Blender
with my little tablet which works great. Trisquel is also my mailman and host
for a little website project I have.

I am running Trisquel on a laptop which luckily sports well supported
hardware, the only thing not working being the bluetooth currently. As this
laptop primarily is intended for educational purposes I am also using Windows
as dictated by the local IT department and its terrible software choices. The
issues I have had to overcome was few. I for example had a need to keep
certain files in sync between Trisquel and Windows. I solved that by keeping
a SD card permanently inserted in the SD Reader functioning as shared space
between the operating systems. Another issue I have had was with the laptop's
touch pad which interrupted anything I did to the keyboard. I lost a lot of
hair in this period because I was unable to disable the touchpad through the
Gnome interface. Took me hours to find out how to edit some configuration
files disable it and the same goes for my tablet's touch functionality.

I came from Fedora, so there was a few things I needed to get used to too
(the gnome 2 interface for example). Other than that, using Trisquel has so
far been a very positive experience and it has been easy for me to adjust to
the new environment.

I'm glad to hear that people can use Trisquel productively without great
issues. I'm finding that the wealth of software available for GNU/Linux is
incredible. There is just so much variety, and I can try them without
"trial" restrictions to see which ones I like.

The one main thing I see that may keep others from using a GNU/Linux distro
is tweaking and configuring the system to make it work that you want it to.
I tried some distros where my wired ethernet connection would not work.
Others where I could not print. Trisquel has worked well with a few tweaks.
But, for me, that was the fun and challenging part.

I still have so much to learn. It's been great thus far with just a few
episodes that drove me crazy.

I use a Linux based distro (or GNU/Linux as they call it here) 100% but I
would say I am on Trisquel about 95% of the time and the other 5% is on my
laptop loaded with Ubuntu 11.10. I have the laptop with standard Ubuntu
because it has been on there for a while and I like to check up and test
things on there as well.

My desktop is mainly for development so I use Eclipse based Aptana Studio 3
with OpenJDK for editing and local testing with nginx, MySQL, MongoDB, and
Git. Of course I have Firefox and Chromium but I want to keep them on there
(even if Trisquel team says its a no no) for testing. At least Firefox is
almost free and Chromium is more open than Chrome.

I've only been using Trisquel for a few weeks now. I was amazed how YouTube
videos actually played via Gnash the open source alternative to flash. I
enabled html5 video and it's flawless when the uploader has it available.

I've used OggConvert (to convert video and audio to ogg vorbis formats.
I've also used Sound Converter to batch export my mp3 library to ogg vorbis
it's wonderful.

I'm currently exporting a video from Pitivi and I recorded the audio via my
phone as I don't have a microphone attached to my computer.
http://youtu.be/k83jBtUoAgA

Trisquel is the first FSF approved distribution I can honestly say does
everything I need my computer to do. It's stable, responsive and amazing.

I've also done a few unorthodox things.
Added XFCE 4 as I prefer it to GNOME
I did a full install on a USB flashdrive and it works on my computer
wonderfully and is fully functional.

I use Parabola on my netbook (1001PX) as the internal microphone didn't work
in Trisquel Taranis (but worked fine in later versions) and I wanted to use
a distro which is supported for a few years without needing to upgrade. I use
Trisquel 4 and 5 on my desktop as it uses an integrated VIA graphics card
which didn't work properly with the latest driver in Parabola (and in fact
the driver in 5.0 didn't work either but I simply downloaded a newer .DEB
package for a newer Ubuntu release to fix it). The notebook has no problem
playing the 3D games I tried such as Neverputt, Neverball and Extreme Tux
Racer. Most of the studff that requires non-free software works fine, e.g.
most video sites I visit work fine with Linterna Magica and Totem plugin or
Gecko Media Player and .RAR files can be extracted with unarchiver via the
command line (it doesn't seem to be integrated with File Roller yet).

Trisquel does work very well thanks in large part to the lead developer
Rubén. Unfortunately many of us still have issues due the dominance of
non-free business models. Making a usable free distribution becomes difficult
as a result.

There are lots of things that need to be worked on in the free software
movement. Many of these things are beyond Rubén's direct control.
Fortunately there are others out there. Check out the fsf for instance.

Rubén's playing an important part in making it possible to use a mostly free
system (Trisquel is 100% free although there are still parts which are
non-free in your computer unrelated to your operating system).

The community has set a goal (missed, but we are still working on it anyway)
of getting 100 members by the end of January 2012(?). This effort is helping
to fund the project.

Right now the project does not make enough to fund a developer full time.
Rubén has been working hard on Trisquel for many years and it would be nice
if we could raise enough money for him to dedicate his full attention to the
project.

If you are able become a member do so! You don't have to contribute much if
you aren't able.

https://trisquel.info/en/member

There are other ways to help fund the project. Besides working to improve
support for free and truly free operating systems like Trisquel (most of all)
my company is donating 25% of the profits when you purchase hardware through
http://libre.thinkpenguin.com/. We also donate to other free projects like
the free software foundation amongst others depending on where you get it
from. All purchases help in a number of ways though. We are focused on
end-users and improving support for free software wherever that leads us.
Such as getting the source code to firmware released where there are no
alternatives. Our entire catalog is free software compatible. We specifically
make sure Trisquel is well supported.

You can also donate a lump sum too although as a member you will probably end
up donating more over time. It also won't be as much of a burden.

There are other projects which need your help that Trisquel relies on. The
drivers/firmware that we are working to get the code for is one good example.

Spreading the message that non-free drivers/firmware are problematic is
something everybody agrees on. Both the guys distributing non-free
distributions and free distributions. You could help by recommending
solutions to this problem on other forums. Non-free distributions included.
That is those having problems with wireless cards like: braodcom, intel,
ralink, realtek, etc or Nvidia/ATI. It is really simple to fix. Replace the
card (where possible) and/or don't buy further hardware dependent on non-free
drivers/firmware. Users have to demand freedom friendly hardware if things
are going to improve.

I have used Trisquel for almost all my x86 computing for a little over 6
months. That is my usual web, email, office documents, light DTP, web site
editing, photo editing, some programming and a bit of hobby graphics. The
only thing I've been unable to use it for is updating my mobile phone's
firmware, which is dependent on proprietary W$ software . That's shortly to
get overwritten as the phone has had a month since last upgrade and hasn't
had a forget everything crash.

The main issue I've had was with nVidia dual head support and moving to a
more recent kernel from jxself fixed the worst of that. Things seem much
better in the week or so I've been using Brigantia beta w/ Linux-libre
3.2.11.

A secondary issue was the [licensed] British radio has standardised on a
single Flash platform for streaming so I had to move to using a radio for
live broadcasts and get-iplayer for recorded BBC TV and radio. A bit of
command line never did anyone any harm :-)

I'm all in with Trisquel since 4.5 came out. I also tried gNewSense of the
[http://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html free distros] but since the
release was so much older I preferred Trisquel. I guess I should give the
other distros a spin as well I guess, if only just to see them.

This oldish HP Pavilion dv5000 is my first laptop and I got lucky since my
wifi worked without me doing anything. As a user of an oldish Radeon I had to
add the nomodeset kernel parameter to be able to suspend and hibernate. And
no 3d effects.

I really like the feeling of being in control of the hardware I own. And
sharing knowledge and well-being with other people. Summa summarum, I'm very
happy.

I have installed Trisquel 5.0 in vitualbox 4.1.10 on imac 24 early 2007 (
core duo duo) with Lion 10.7.3 primary system. I want know if my hardware (
for example airport wi-fi,isight webcam) are compatibility for uses in
Trisquel and my sound card firewire maudio firewire solo is recognized in
Trisquel 5.0 in case you want to install the operating system natively on a
partition of mac.
Hi

gennaro

Trisquel only on 3 computers (2 desktop; 1 netbook). My wife has a Mac that I
borrow on the rare occasion when I need to translate an old file from a
proprietary format to something I can use in Trisquel. I feel the need to
take a shower after using the Mac. :)

I'm on Trisquel since november...
I have also installed Ubuntu 11.10 because sometimes I have to use something
wich use flash and doesn't run with gnash. But I'm also interested about the
news from Ubuntu so I still use it, but only 5% of time.
My hardware run properly with Trisquel, only 3D isn't available, but I'm near
to buy a new laptop and it will be Trisquel compatible.
I had some troubles with unrar, but now it's ok...
A very nice experience use Trisquel!

I have mostly used Trisquel mostly inside a KVM-based virtual machine. So I
am not shure if my experiences really count but there you go:

Unfortunately on my hardware (GeForce 9800GT) 3D acceleration is cumbersome.
This is not really a problem of Trisquel itself but the old version of the
Noveau driver included with the older Ubuntu versions on which Trisquel is
based. I have seen my graphic adapter perform much better at an acceptable
level with the latest Knoppix (6.7 ?) using a newer version of Noveau. Those
of you with NVidia cards will experience big issues with Noveau when you try
to play games (e.g. Alien Arena, Xonotic, Open Arena).

For general use (E-Mail, surfing the web, watch Youtube, writting some text)
I think Trisquel and the alikes are perfectly fine. Thanks to the Trisquel
team for that. I will definitely consider using Trisquel instead of Ubuntu
the next time I set up a PC for friends or relatives.

Even the free alternatives to watch Youtube and other flashbased video sites
are acceptable. This is great.

Most PCs nowadays are overkill for most average users anyway. Personally I
think as much as Trisquel succeed in freeing the user in one aspect, it
massively fails in other aspects and a more wider focus. It is important that
the reasons for this are not directly related to Trisquel itself but the way
current hardware is build.

By excluding non-free firmware files, which is perfectly fine from the
perspective of free software, any free Linux distribution out there put the
average user in a position which I find questionable in regard to the general
freedom of the user and in regard to other aspects. I will try to elabourate
with my hardware and usage profile as examples:

Not fully working 3D for gaming on NVidia cards:
All my system sport NVidia cards (GeForce 9500GT / 9800GT). I like to play a
FPS now and then (Alien Arena, Xonotic, UT99, Darkplaces with different mods)
and the more recent versions of Noveau are nearly perfectly capable of
providing me the functionality I want. Unfortunately the version of Noveau
shipped with Ubuntu are rather old and provide a bad experience. This is not
really the fault of Trisquel but may be providing a newer version of Noveau
in the Trisquel repo compared to the corresponding Ubuntu version will help.
This requires man power of course.
Here is where rolling release distributions such as Parabola really shine.
You get the latest working drivers in a rather short timeframe.

No working video acceleration (VAAPI / VDPAU):
As far as I am aware neither the free AMD/ATI nor NVidia drivers provide
reasonable video acceleration similar to the propritary GPU drivers. This
means that you either need to have a beefy CPU (at least faster than my AMD
X2 with 2x2.7 GHz) in order to watch 1080p material encoded in h264 or you
relly on external devices (e.g. hardware player attached to your TV).

Issues with mostly external devices relying on non-free firmware:
This is by far the biggest issue I personally have with each distribution
excluding non-free firmware files. A lot of my devices rely on firmware files
such as the NIC on my motherboard, my Hauppauge PVR150 (PCI), my DVB-T
receivers (USB) or simply my Agfa e20 scanner (USB). I could find "free"
alternatives like using a USB NIC instead of the mainboard NIC, use an
external DVB-X receiver instead the USB receiver but for me this is both not
acceptable. A USB NIC does not make me more "free" than the internal NIC
which relies on a blob. Free as free software yes but I would need both to
waste personal ressources (money / time) to buy hardware most likely produced
in a non-free country under bad conditions for the workers. Take your time to
think about it !

Using an external DVB-S/C/T receiver as replacement for my current USB DVB-T
box attached to my PC would again be a valid option from the puristic
perspective of free software. Again it fails for me because of the same
reasons as above: My personal freedom as user is much more restricted by a
propritary box with propritary software on it than from a simple blob on my
Linux box. I have much more control and flexibility with a device which
integrates into my PC than I will have from a DVB-S HDD receiver. Also I
would was personal ressources (money / time) to buy hardware most likely
produced in a non-free country under bad conditions for the workers.

For some areas I think no valid hardware options without non-free firmware
exist or at least they are not widely available and have a high pricepoint.

By supporting manufactures which provide a better free software experience
(e.g. buying an Intel-based CPU with Intel-based GPU) you endanger the market
in another way. Just imagine if we would have only Intel again providing
PC-based hardware as several years ago when AMD couldn't compete
performance-wise. Prices would explode again.

To sum it up:
Trisquel is a nice OS but under the current conditions limits the abilities
of the user in some aspects. If you can deal with this limitations is up to
you. I can and will not shell out another few hundered euros (fast quadcore
CPU, DVB-C/S receiver) simply to be "free" but what I will do in the end is
paying more attention when buying new hardware.

Personally I do understand the ideas / concerns of the free software movement
very well but I also think that several descions produces problems in other
areas. I think manufacturers should be embraced in the first place if their
hardware runs on Linux. A firmware should be rather accepted in the first
place and work on a free firmware alternative should follow instead of
rejecting the use of the hardware by omiting firmware in the first place.
Anyway, I am not trying to preach the pope here. Everyone is free to do what
he wants.

I've just discovered Trisquel. I like the OS very much and plan to use it
full time. It seems to have a much lower overhead than Ubuntu. Now I've got
to make a small donation to the developer. I'd give more but I'm not working
now. when things get better I'll donate more. The only issues I'm having are
with the playback of videos but I willl fix that by installing html5 and
learning more about gnash and the other player codecs instead of using unfree
flash.

Hi!

I'm glad to see that we have people doing "real things" with Trisquel;
spread the word! So
often I am confronted with the assumption that desktop Linux is just
something for computer hobbyists and malisious crackers, to play with.
I'm
sending this from my general-purpose netbook, I use for socializing,
taking
notes, reading, watching videos, ...

Cheers,

Dave

On Sun, 25 Mar 2012, name at domain wrote:

> I use Trisquel full time on my desktop. I bought a different motherboard
> (and, as a consequence, a new CPU and new RAM) for it to be as free software
> friendly, as possible. Before that, I had to cope with slow performance even
> without compiz effects.
>
> Now I can't play a number of games that are too advanced to run with the
> integrated Intel X4500 graphicschip.
>
> However, it's not just inconvenience you have to go through! I was able to
> easily do a podcast for work. Recorded video with ffmpeg, recorded sound with
> Audacity, did the editing and rendering with PiTiVi. My colleges did podcasts
> as well and mine had quite high video quality, maybe the best out of all. Did
> all that while booting from a live USB-stick.

The newer Intel HD graphics chipsets are much more powerful and capable. They match Nvidia for entry level cards.

The newer Intel HD graphics chipsets are much more powerful and capable. They
match Nvidia for entry level cards.

:) start coding.

Or look for something similar. There are a lot of good games if you look hard enough which are compatible with Trisquel.

:) start coding.

Or look for something similar. There are a lot of good games if you look hard
enough which are compatible with Trisquel.

http://libre.thinkpenguin.com/ got USB bluetooth cards for Trisquel.

http://libre.thinkpenguin.com/ got USB bluetooth cards for Trisquel.

From personal experience, what drives users away is fear from the unknown. "Normal" users do not want to tweak their desktop. They just use what works and what they know how to use. I tried to convince my dad several times to use GNU/Linux but he always repeats: "I don't know how to use that". He doesn't care about it. He's so tied to the operating system that he once made a folder with executables several years ago and uses the same software several years later like he's still using obsolete things like Acrobat 5.0 (released in 2002) just because it does the job. OTOH my mother started with computers using Trisquel and is used to the icons on desktop and the browser icon beside the home folder. If I remove the icon or move the panel to the top she will throw a complaint. Like I stated in a previous topic, I am against duplicate efforts like five hundred distros. In the end they will all have their own bugs and incompatibilities.

From personal experience, what drives users away is fear from the unknown.
"Normal" users do not want to tweak their desktop. They just use what works
and what they know how to use. I tried to convince my dad several times to
use GNU/Linux but he always repeats: "I don't know how to use that". He
doesn't care about it. He's so tied to the operating system that he once made
a folder with executables several years ago and uses the same software
several years later like he's still using obsolete things like Acrobat 5.0
(released in 2002) just because it does the job. OTOH my mother started with
computers using Trisquel and is used to the icons on desktop and the browser
icon beside the home folder. If I remove the icon or move the panel to the
top she will throw a complaint. Like I stated in a previous topic, I am
against duplicate efforts like five hundred distros. In the end they will all
have their own bugs and incompatibilities.

This is why we sell hardware for GNU/Linux that is free software compatible and not just "Linux" compatible. Less technical users aren't capable of configuring software and none of us should have to. Non-free operating systems make life difficult.

GNU/Linux is easier than a Mac although like with a Mac you do have to pay attention to the hardware you buy. Unlike a Mac the right hardware is dead simple to install though.

This is why we sell hardware for GNU/Linux that is free software compatible
and not just "Linux" compatible. Less technical users aren't capable of
configuring software and none of us should have to. Non-free operating
systems make life difficult.

GNU/Linux is easier than a Mac although like with a Mac you do have to pay
attention to the hardware you buy. Unlike a Mac the right hardware is dead
simple to install though.

I forget where I was reading this or maybe I heard it from Rubén (lead developer). Chromium's main problem was privacy related. Those issues have been resolved. There may still be an issue with it pointing you to non-free plug-ins though. It'll be back in Trisquel's repository again eventually.

I forget where I was reading this or maybe I heard it from Rubén (lead
developer). Chromium's main problem was privacy related. Those issues have
been resolved. There may still be an issue with it pointing you to non-free
plug-ins though. It'll be back in Trisquel's repository again eventually.

Have you tried installing ununrar? I believe that gives an interface that is similar to the non-free unrar for Unarchiver, so you can use it with file roller. That's what I use.