Friday Distro: Trisquel GNU/Linux

by
in linux on (#2SKF)
story imageAhoy there. Let's say you'll be wantin' a Linux distro that's been blessed by his ownself the Grand Admiral of the GNU revolution, Richard Stallman. Arrr. And supposin' you can't abide by the wretched bilge that's binary blobs infectin' yer own GNU/Linux system, foisted upon ya by the likes of those lowly bastards Adobe and NVidia, whose scurvy, un-transparent and despicable rot goes against your very bein'. Well then, you'll be wantin' to make sure yer own good ship Linux hoists the latest version of Trisquel GNU/Linux, and smartly at that.

Off with ya then, to the grimy bastards at Distrowatch, with some right fine background for ya. Trisquel hails from Spain, a piratin' and thievin' port of call if ever there was one. Arrr. But they've chosen what's proper over what's easy. Turn away if you've got an Nvidia graphics card, or if ya can't stand the likes of a distro based on the latest Ubuntu. Trisquel is a fine lookin' ship if ever I've laid my eyes on one, hoistin' aloft clean versions of LXDE, XFCE, and KDE desktops, but believe you me when I tell ya they've been stripped bare of any software that isn't cut from the purest, GPL cloth. I sailed that ship in a virtual machine while hittin' no reefs, aaar, but I do reckon if your hardware isn't the plainest of vanilla, you may find it chafes your britches when you install 'er.

That said though, avast, she's a smart little distro, she sails a beaut, and she's right easy on the eyes, if I do say so myself. As for the package selection, aaar, when I'm at the tiller and the mainsail's drawin' wind, most of the packages I use I found sittin' sweet as a lily in the repos. Your own position at sea might be affected, though, if you find yerself needin' something exotic.

I myself am as pure as the next Linux captain, who be supportin' the cause of throwin' all those lily-livered binary blobs in the brig. But not if it means I can't sail my ship. That's why you won't be findin' this pirate sailin' Trisquel myself. But if ideological purity be yer cup-o-rum, well then, aaaarrr: raise the plank on Trisquel, and may fine winds be at yer back. Drop in at the Trisquel tavern where you can break yer jaw askin' yer questions, and tell 'em Captain Zafiro17 sent ya, like the devil himmself. Aaaar haar haar har har har.
Reply 24 comments

Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: -1, Flamebait)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-19 11:55 (#2SKH)

This pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. And I'm not going to waste my time trying to decipher this summary. The moment I saw the pirate talk idiocy, I knew I wasn't going to be reading this summary fully. That's too bad, because it may have had some useful info, were it not written in an unnecessarily stupid way.

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 2, Insightful)

by engblom@pipedot.org on 2014-09-19 12:16 (#2SKJ)

It is not that difficult to read :)

I actually found it amusing even, in this context.

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 3, Informative)

by engblom@pipedot.org on 2014-09-19 12:19 (#2SKK)

I wish there was an edit button. I wanted to add the fact that the context is the "International Talk Like A Pirate Day". Instead of the boring headline "Today is Talk Like A Pirate Day", it was quite funny to learn about it through a well written review.

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 2, Interesting)

by seriously@pipedot.org on 2014-09-19 12:28 (#2SKN)

Arrr. I, for one, enjoyed the subtle erudition laid on the deck by this fine piece of writing, if I ever saw one ... may you find water and shade.
Drop in at the Trisquel tavern where you can break yer jaw askin' yer questions
I shall nominate thee for the quote of the week award :-)

Now, about that Nvidia business: I haven't had Nvidia hardware in a while, but what is the current state of "nouveau" ?

Nvidia & Nouveau (Score: 1)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-09-19 14:08 (#2SKY)

I wasn't sure myself, since my machine has an integrated Intel video card (which isn't spectacular but meets my needs, and is fully supported). But I googled "nvidia nouveau problem" and came up with a bunch of hits. More telling, Google helpfully suggested I also try this other search phrase: "replace nouveau with nvidia driver".
https://www.google.sn/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&es_th=1&ie=UTF-8#q=replace+nouveau+with+nvidia+driver&revid=1521166681

That search turns up many, many hits. Offhand, I'd say nouveau isn't quite there yet. But Gnash on the other hand, seems to work pretty well.

I did a quick search in the repos for the stuff I use: mutt, slrn, vim, emacs, alpine, calligra, openoffice, and they were all there. Forgot to look for jedit, my favorite java-based graphical text editor, but I know for a fact it runs fine on IcedTea, so I'd bet that it works on Trisquel. I'd think proprietary drivers are the big show-stopper here. A lot of what you find on a typical Linux install is already there, and since it's based on Ubuntu the installation is really easy.

Re: Nvidia & Nouveau (Score: 1, Informative)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-21 09:08 (#2SPJ)

As a Trisquel user for something like 4 years now I'd like to fill in some details.

Actually nouveau is doing pretty good. Having said that if you have a very new Nvidia card then you might be out of luck.

ATI/AMD card is a far worse situation, no 3D or other hardware acceleration at all and the newest cards don't work at all.

Intel GPU is smooth sailing all the way because they have free stack.

Re: Nvidia & Nouveau (Score: 1)

by seriously@pipedot.org on 2014-09-22 15:52 (#2SS5)

Thanks for the input.
Intel GPU is smooth sailing all the way because they have free stack.
I've been sticking to Intel for that very reason and I can confirm.

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: -1, Troll)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-19 13:16 (#2SKR)

Meanwhile, the three previous articles, all written in perfectly proper English, have zero comments. Bugger off, whiner. By the way, the "Submit" button is at the top right, wanker. Submit your own, interesting and well written articles, or go back to your troll cave and fuck yourself.

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 1)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-19 13:50 (#2SKW)

Exactly! I believe this is the FIRST time I've agreed with a downmodding here. There was NOTHING wrong with what Zafiro did (and spent a fair amount of time on it seems). I "got the joke" pretty quickly, even though (a) I didn't know it was ITLAP Day again, and (b) I too find the holiday stupid and a meme that has outlived its sell-by date.

It was kind of cute, and it made him happy to do it. Screw off, OP. :)

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 1, Funny)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-19 15:31 (#2SM3)

...Screw off, OP. :)
Mind yer manners matey.

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: -1)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-19 19:12 (#2SM9)

Oh sure, call me out but not the guy who told him to go fuck himself. :(

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: -1)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-20 02:39 (#2SMZ)

Way to go, registered Pipedot users. Keep up the pointless downmodding and renew my lack of faith in your judgment.

If you disagree with someone or find them rude, SAY SO. Stop downmodding like weenies.

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 1)

by skarjak@pipedot.org on 2014-09-20 13:17 (#2SNB)

It's cute and funny... but I did stop reading the summary as well once I realised how much of a headache it would be.

Still, no distro is better than arch anyway, so I didn't need to read the article. :p

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-21 09:12 (#2SPK)

Still, no distro is better than arch anyway
https://parabolagnulinux.org/

Re: Pirate talk idiocy is not amusing. (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-21 11:27 (#2SPQ)

Meh FreeBSD for the win

as usual (Score: 5, Interesting)

by zafiro17@pipedot.org on 2014-09-19 19:45 (#2SME)

Ten hours later, a lot of name calling about the fact that I used pirate language, and no actual discussion about the distro. Kind of pathetic, actually. I'm getting better nerd conversation everywhere but here - a pity since everyone else's interface is not as nice as this one.

This place has tons of promise but writing and editing articles is a huge amount of work for very little return these days. You'd better believe the guys researching and submitting articles aren't doing it so they can have their spelling checked by the community.

Re: as usual (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-19 21:22 (#2SMJ)

Dude, in the other threads we're having nice little chats about the AT command set and the economics of solar power. Don't get so discouraged!

I can't comment on this distro because I never even heard of it before, let alone used it.

(And on Slashdot the thread would probably have quickly devolved into yet another round of dissertations on the greatness and/or evils of Stallman and his personal grooming.)

Re: as usual (Score: 1)

by scotch@pipedot.org on 2014-09-20 06:40 (#2SN5)

agreed.
But maybe I will give it a try in some kvm because there the emulated hardware should be quite "standard" ;)

Re: as usual (Score: 2, Insightful)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-20 02:00 (#2SMT)

Am having a look now actually. Some of us take 10 hours to see the article :)

Re: as usual (Score: 2)

by engblom@pipedot.org on 2014-09-20 02:42 (#2SN0)

Thanks for a great review! I enjoy reading these weekly reviews. The distros picked are a bit odd, so there is a big chance nobody know them well enough for commenting and staying on topic at this point.

Re: as usual (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-20 12:12 (#2SN9)

Sorry, but your summary is damn near impossible for me to read. I'm not a native English speaker, and I can't be bothered to learn stupid slang that's rarely used. I would have liked to know more about Trisomy GNU/Linux, but now I probably won't because of the bad summary.

Torrent (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-20 05:13 (#2SN2)

Woohoo! They have a torrent on their download page

:-)

Good to see these sites have donation forms there too.

Thanks Zaf (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2014-09-20 05:14 (#2SN3)

Am looking at this one now