The Future Of 32-bit Support
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Given the recent discussions about 32-bit support in Trisquel 10 I thought I'd point this out:
https://jxself.org/32-bit.shtml
I agree that 32-bit shouldn't be abandoned. I think the best course of action may be to rebase on Debian. With Ubuntu moving to Snap this might be inevitable.
I honestly think you guys should abandon ubuntu in general, they are not exactly known for security and they have had many ugly scandals, regarding their integrity.
The spying on by default
Snaps being used to potentially be required for certain applications
snaps also seem to drag in stuff you don't need nor want
amazon partnership in past
malware issues in a ubuntu ppa repo, which apparently happened even before archlinux had problems in their aur repo
the list is probably longer than this, but these things I can immediately name are things that I question about ubuntu.
Debian would be a much better base long term aka...
Also, you would have better security then forking ubuntu and if you really needed to make it more user friendly, I don't see how that would be hard to do. Also, you could just fork ubuntu's installer to make it work with debian instead if needed and make a bunch of changes for the long term, if needed.
Not that Debian is my favorite distro, but out of the two? Yeah... I would take debian over ubuntu any day of the week...
Guilty by association, huh?
"if you really needed to make it more user friendly, I don't see how that would be hard to do."
Please don't underestimate the size of that task. This is why Trisquel uses Ubuntu because that work has already been done. In terms of tasks it's easier to remove the pieces of Ubuntu that are not desired than it is to reinvent the other work that's already been done that is desirable to keep.
But let's not try to derail this thread on a different topic of distro bases. It's not happening.
Perhaps you are right about the size of the task being really large, though, you might potentially be able to support more architectures...
As for whether it will happen, you are probably right...
Just to be clear, though... guilty by association isn't the reason though. There are those out there who might think it is like using an allwinner arm chip in a libre project, similar to how Luke the eoma68 developer was using the A20, for said device.
That all being said, stopping here...
"guilty by association isn't the reason though"
"There are those out there who might think it is like using an allwinner arm chip in a libre project, similar to how Luke the eoma68 developer was using the A20, for said device."
Allwinner has been accused multiple times of violating the GPL by not providing the appropriate source code.
Not all Allwinner products have that problem though. Applying the specific (GPL violations in certain cases for certain products) and applying it out to all of their products and to those using them, whether or not they have that problem, is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
That also seems to be happening with Ubuntu & Trisquel.
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Specifically on A20, https://linux-sunxi.org/GPL_Violations says there is no problem with it.
If that is correct, I also find https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers misleading as it does not mention A10/A13/20 fully respecting the user freedom. Moreover, the Olinuxino Lime 2, based on A20, is officially supported by Parabola.
Maybe more "incomplete" than "misleading"? It's a big project to document all SOC so I'm sure someone could always point to something that's missing. Why not help out the FSF there with documentation?
I have no idea of how much work it is to maintain those, but as long as our options regarding free software are as limited as they are, I vote for the continuous support for 32-bit.
Thanks for the efforts, jxself.
>"Given the recent discussions about 32-bit support in Trisquel 10"
How did these discussions turn out? Will there be a 32-bit Trisquel 11?
EDIT: Never mind - I see the discussion in the main forum. That's a big bummer.
Speaking of which, I need to create my next 32-bit libre-antiX respin soon. I promised to do it once antiX 21 came out.
> my next 32-bit libre-antiX respin soon.
Wait, is there a new 64-bit libre-antiX respin? That was probably my best experience with minimalist systems to date.
There is if I make one.
What desktop should I focus on this time?
Same one as previously, which would be IceWM, I guess: https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/antix-libre-respin.
I thought you had already announced something that I might have missed.
EDIT: on second thought, maybe you should focus on the 32-bit version (see below).
Not sure you would be able to install a 32-bit version on a 64-bit system. You could try I guess. Seems like you would have to have system-wide multi-arch for every package. And you could then probably never install any 3rd party packages. I'm not sure though.
I'll try to get to work on it soon. I have a busy week at work this week, but hopefully soon. I just need to strip out the non-free packages and add the Linux-libre and abrowser repos - shouldn't be too terribly difficult. I've been trying antiX 21 on a flash drive (I love antiX's built-in flash drive persistence), it seems as fast and powerful as antiX 19 was.
> trying antiX 21 on a flash drive (I love antiX's built-in flash drive persistence), it seems as fast and powerful as antiX 19 was.
I am going to do that now, 32-bit antiX on a 64-bit machine, so we will know soon enough how it fares. I would have thought that the only "limitation" would be that RAM cannot be extended beyond 4GB, which is the amount I am currently using with 64-bit systems anyway.
EDIT: now posting from live antiX 21 386-full on that 64-bit eeepc. Awesome. Can't wait for your libre respin.
EDIT2: just installed it, like a breeze. So yes, it seems that the only restriction is that you are theoretically limited to 4GB of RAM, which is aplenty for such a lightweight system. Eeepc is more than fine at 2GB.
So, what you're saying is that if you installed an 8-bit OS on that system you would be 800% faster. Should I do a respin of 8-bit GEOS instead?
Yes, respin that, run it on a Power10 and watch that black hole absorb us in the blink of an eye.
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I installed antiX 21 386-full on an old 64-bit Dell netbook (1GB RAM) and it runs really well. Much faster than Trisquel Mini. I'd be very happy to have access to a libre respin!
OK I'll get busy on it soon. Try to remind me if I haven't uploaded an ISO within about a week.
A word of caution - it won't be as "free" as Trisquel - it will only have the obvious non-free packages removed and abrowser and Linux-libre added. Trisquel does a bunch of additional modifications to their packages to get the OS to approach 100% pure libre. Nearly all of the antiX packages will be from Debian, so they'll meet the Debian standard of "freedom", which is still fairly good. antiX has its own repo with a few of their own packages, but I don't know of any that are under a non-free license or have things like artwork restrictions. antiX is Debian with sysvinit init system and a few of its own home-made tools.
And I won't be able to strip out all offers of less than 100% free software downloads. antiX offers to download a lot of free and non-free software from 3rd parties by default through its home-made package installer. I can limit that exposure by using the "libre" version of the antiX package installer that the lead dev made for us. So you won't be offered obviously non-free stuff like Skype or Spotify or something, but chromium and palemoon and things like that which have a free overall license but some non-free bits or restrictive artwork might still be offered in the package installer.
Actually, I have installed 32 bit on a 64 bit machine before, silly I know, but I have done it. ;)
32-bit is still great, the x32 ABI uses the AMD64 instructions, but only uses 32-bit pointers and that allows more stuff to fit in cache, so if you don't need 64-bit pointers and the AMD64 ABI, software is actually 12-20% faster.
Given that 32-bit systems can run on 64-bit machines, while the opposite is not true, would it not make more sense to give 32-bit systems priority, if priority must be given? I am almost tempted to take that 32-bit libre-antiX and see how it fares on my current machine.
I put a very rough beta version of antiX libre respin 32-bit on the internet archive, you can download and try it here: https://archive.org/details/snapshot-20220209_0054
Let me know how it goes! I'm interested to see if it boots up for anyone. I have more polish I'm going to be doing on it, but this is a good time to see if it even works for people.
If you want to download the torrent, qbitorrent works best in my experience, the transmission torrent app has failed to complete the downloads from the Internet Archive torrents when I've tried it.
This version of libre-antiX uses a PAE kernel. If you don't have a cpu that can run a PAE kernel, this might not boot up for you. On the good side, if you do have a CPU that can handle it, you won't be restricted to only 4gb of memory.
The default desktop is JWM. I find it much better looking and more minimal than Icewm. But Icewm is included also, you can access it by hitting the F6 key at the antiX boot menu. The file manager on here is zzzfm, a fork of the spacefm file manager that is being maintained by some antiX users. I think it's a pretty good and lightweight file manager.
abrowser is installed and the Linux-libre 4.19 32-bit PAE kernel. If you end up installing one of these respins and you want a different kernel, go to the Linux-libre page on jxself.org and look for the command to run to try out your preferred version of the kernel. jxself's Linux-libre repo is already installed, you don't have to do any of the setup stuff, just go toward the bottom of the page and pick the 'apt' command for installing your preferred kernel.
JWM is quite fine too, I think that's also the one you chose last time. I had a feeling that the general look was somewhat different this time (because it was IceWM) but I thought maybe I have just become old and confused by anything that is note plain Trisquel+MATE.
Well the download just completed on transmission. More to come later.
EDIT_0: I am getting IceWM by default. Am I normal?
EDIT_1: I think I am normal. Your respin appears to be spinning too fast for you to control it in any way: it will start IceWM by default. Of course it will gladly start JWM instead if politely asked by pressing the F6 key. Or Fluxbox, or any of the cool zzz_stuff. I first thought that something might have gone wrong while copying the iso and that I was still using the previous vanilla antiX system, but no. It is just ignoring all your warnings and running through them. Elation.
EDIT_2: no signs of abrowser, though, but links 2 is there. At some point I started playing with window managers and the menu bar icons became unresponsive, so I decided to go back to some other stuff. Other than that, I can confirm it is running like a spinning respin.
OK, I'm in it now also, it's running well and it is running the 4.19 Linux-libre PAE kernel I see. I need to re-add abrowser and some of my artwork, but actually this version is not far from passable.
Two questions for you, lanun/|anun/Ianun (or whatever your Russian spy name is today) -
a) Does it run on your eeeeeeeeePc? And do you get any weird hangups or freezes?
2) I've included the updated Intel microcode and the Intel microcode updater for now - should I leave them in or delete them? Technically they are non-free, but as you know we've been having all kinds of discussions on this forum about the pro's and the con's of having them there.
d) Is your wifi internet working? And if so, do you have an Atheros wifi card or Atheros adapter?
0. It really was a great experience. Because of your many words of extra caution, I truly did think for a moment that something had gone wrong while transferring to USB, because everything just looked like the non-liberated antiX system I had been trying last. But the kernel matched your description, so I had to wake up to reality and accept that sometimes, things just go smooth.
1. I think boba is my longest lasting code name to date. A sure guess. Now, concerning your seven questions, the answer in general is yes.
2. I will simply keep numbering lines, because that's what I do these days.
4. More specifically, yes, I plugged that live USB in a fully consenting eee, and no, I have no memory of getting deep frozen this time. Not once during the whole process. Deeply troubling.
5. Now that is a tricky question, is it not?
6. I currently have no idea, I do as much networking as possible through plugging wires into sockets, and I currently have the luxury of having access to both a roof and an wired connection. Some ancient story about Parabola just floated up the surface of my otherwise quiet mind, and it reminded me that eeepc have not been graced with such freely free wifi devices. So it should not be working with this fully liberated kernel. I can test. I'll be out testing now.
>"yes, I plugged that live USB in a fully consenting eee"
So, either your eeePc supports PAE, or this kernel works regardless of whether or not it is PAE. Could you run this command, and tell me whether or not you see a bunch of brightly colored "PAE" words showing up in the output on your eeePc?
grep --color=always -i PAE /proc/cpuinfo
This is a command that jxself uses to determine if a system supports one of his PAE kernels or not. We will just steal it from him for our purposes this morning.
Yes, I does support PAE through my eee extension.
Although it is completely useless here :D (for matters of RAM, I means)
That's OK. That probably means that for some people's 32-bit machines, this version of libre-antiX 32-bit will not run. If we run into those people, I'll make a non-PAE respin as well.
"WiFi Technologies:
0 Found, 0 Powered"
We need to invent WiFi again, it seems.
The little blue light allegedly showing wifi is active, is blue, so we are actively not using it.
It would be good if you could borrow an Atheros wifi dongle from an autistic libretard friend, like maybe if the guy who writes the digdeeper website was your next door neighbor you could borrow his.
Although it's working with my Atheros wifi dongle this morning, so maybe I'm autistic and libretard enough to be a sufficient test group.
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I installed AndyX(!) from a USB drive and it's running nicely on a 64-bit Dell 1012 netbook from which I'm typing this via Seamonkey. Wifi is working (worked with Trisquel). AR9285. So far, so good. I'll play around with it on this machine and attempt installation on an old MacBook pro on which I couldn't install AntiX 32-bit, but 64-bit works, albeit with non-free Wifi. I have a TP AR9271 for that one when it's liberated.
Thanks for doing this!
Hi librededrs,
Good to hear! You and I are both running Dell's today by the way. So you installed Seamonkey from the antiX (or AndyX) package installer? Or was it already installed? I'm assuming it should not have been already installed.
OK, if you want to stick with this version, you can install abrowser by using MagicBanana's script here: https://trisquel.info/en/forum/state-web-browsers-debian#comment-164779
All you've got to do is open the text file in a text editor, and change "nabia-updates" to "etiona-updates" in line 4. Then save it, and run it as
sudo sh ./abrowser-on-debian.txt
That will add the Trisquel key, the Trisquel repo, install abrowser, and do apt-pinning of the Trisquel repo so that antiX does NOT pull other packages besides abrowser from it. I tested it and as long as you change line 4 above, it works like a charm on antiX 32-bit.
Edit: If you want to install a more "final" version, I'll be posting one with abrowser already installed and with a fancy new wallpaper for you soon.
Thank you very much, Jason, your work is very valuable.
"Popularity is not the deepest way to consider this issue though: It's important to consider what's good for our software freedom."
I really appreciate that you continue your great work for 32-bit. I can continue to recommend Trisquel and Linux-libre to my people as in countries like ours, Indonesia, 32-bit computers are still used and many do not have internet access. You are right about popularity being not the deepest way to consider this issue.
Sincerely yours,
Malsasa
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One of my favorite things in the libre AntiX respin is Poor Mans Radio Player. According to:
https://github.com/hakerdefo/pmrp
it's in the public domain, which is not the same as free. It also requires mpg123, which is free and in the Trisquel repository.
I'd like to install pmrp on my Trisquel machines, but I'm not sure if it qualifies as free though it is a bash script.
Any opinions would be appreciated.
Thanks.
pmrp is released with a Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal ("CC0"), which the FSF says is compatible with the GPL:
"Public Domain (#PublicDomain)
" Being in the public domain is not a license; rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed. Practically speaking, though, if a work is in the public domain, it might as well have an all-permissive non-copyleft free software license. Public domain material is compatible with the GNU GPL.
" If you want to release your work to the public domain, we encourage you to use formal tools to do so. We ask people who make small contributions to GNU to sign a disclaimer form; that's one solution. If you're working on a project that doesn't have formal contribution policies like that, CC0 is a good tool that anyone can use. It formally dedicates your work to the public domain, and provides a fallback license for cases where that is not legally possible."
https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/License:PublicDomain
Probably the reason it's not available on Trisquel is that it's not packaged on Ubuntu. I don't see any reason why you couldn't use it.
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I guess I could have investigated CC0. Sorry about that, but thanks!
No problem, I needed to learn that myself. From what I've read, it sounds like any public domain software is OK in terms of the GPL.
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In Free Software, Free Society Third Edition (p. 70 of the printed edition):
"In some cases, an executable program can be in the public domain but the source code is not available. This is not free software, because free software requires accessibility of source code."
I can open and read the script.
Further...
"However, 'public domain' is a legal term and means precisely, 'not coprighted.' For clarity, we recommend using 'public domain' for that meaning only, and using other terms to convey the other meanings."
CC0 (I actually read it this time!) fits this meaning as it is a waiver of copyright.
So, I agree pmrp is indeed o.k.
Thanks.
By the way, I'm a big fan of pmrp too. antiX is full of these little gems that you just don't see hardly anywhere else.
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