Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-08-09 Thread tobias

At the current time Qt is not accessible on GNU/Linux, we need to fix that


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-27 Thread shiretoko
 In particular, I didn't understand why the sound would mute itself so much  
for a long time (it's related to headphones being plugged in and what Xfce  
does to the volume of individual devices)


Yes, I really agree and made similiar experiences.
Beside of this, Xfce4 is really nice. I think a bit of work has to be done  
concerning the optical appereance of the desktop; some parts look a bit  
oldfashioned. I never found a theme which made the task bar look nice while  
showing running programs.


I don't think LXDE would be the right choice. The normal user is used to a  
really nice design; they are pampered with lots of eyecandy. Beaware of our  
rivals: stylish Ios and also Win7/8 looks nice to most people.

LXDE is too spartan, to old-fashioned.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-27 Thread Andrew R .
On 27/06/13 17:53, shiretoko wrote:
 Yes, I really agree and made similiar experiences. Beside of this, 
 Xfce4 is really nice. I think a bit of work has to be done concerning
 the optical appereance of the desktop; some parts look a bit
 oldfashioned. I never found a theme which made the task bar look nice
 while showing running programs.
 
 I don't think LXDE would be the right choice. The normal user is used
 to a really nice design; they are pampered with lots of eyecandy.
 Beaware of our rivals: stylish Ios and also Win7/8 looks nice to
 most people. LXDE is too spartan, to old-fashioned.

Keep in mind that the themes of Xfce and LXDE can always be changed.

Andrew.



Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-27 Thread shiretoko
I don't think different themes can improve the problems I mentioned, because  
I tried a view and recognized the same old fashioned touch.

It seems to be something more intrinsic to the desktop environment.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-27 Thread zatroch

My understandment of project health is as following:
1.| The creator - Rubén - has his very own life difficulties in Galicia  
region of Spain. Perhaps his brother, who commited to what Trisquel  
represents now, too.


2.| Progress made on Sugar environment, additional Dextrose tools and OLPC  
hardware enablement (perhaps including reverse-engineering?!) during his  
dayjob makes him more fulfilled overall (unquestionably), because the next  
generation of children should be aware of Software, Societal  Digital  
Freedom in regards with mesh (ad-hook) networking as well.


3.| I agree on hackers' resource waste concerning gNewSense vs. Debian  
project, the only logic in this is that the Debian GNU/Linux guys do not  
officialy support and pre-build packages for MIPS computing architecture  
(thou am curious about whole MIPS know-how in hands of Imagination  
Technologies corp. and blobbed pre-requisities for their upcoming Warrior  
chips; still waiting for more proper revisions of China designed Longsoon 3A  
/ 3B units inside of worldwide available SoC-s.


4.| Toutatis with LTS point releases will be sufficient to my needs for the  
foreseeable future, although users of nVidia graphic cores along with Nouveau  
KMS drivers are dying and longing for the most current software stack, either  
because of important regressions / bug fixes, added features or enhanced  
stability and drawing responsivenes (do not get me wrong guys, Intel driver  
is just way more mature and time tested).


5.| Myself am no expert in CLA-s and license exploitation, but I expect more  
lock-in ahead with Ubuntu upstream since more and more Microsofties (senior  
staff) get introduced and involved from within - it is like cancer you know  
or mole rush (Barnes  Noble? Ruined, check. Skype? Ruined, check. Nokia?  
Ruined, check. Dell? Ruined, check. Hewlett-Packard? Ruined, check. And of  
course Novell/SuSE.. Double-check.) I was talking about introduction of Mir.  
In this case I am on par with devs employed by Digia, Intel, Samsung and  
others who strongly advocate and support Wayland / temporary XWayland.


6.| Focus on light-weight DE / WM-s is not worth it. If necessary, then I  
would go for Razor-qt or Openbox  dwm. Forget the LXDE, Xfce, MATE,  
Cinnamon, forking issue altogether. GNOME and KDE is for the mass being  
introduced in here, switching from Windows and Macintosh.


7.| FSF and Debian Project Leader should finish off the remaining  
philosophical incompatibility asap, because there is no chance about Red Hat  
giving up non-free firmware and tainted kernel in comminity led Fedora  
(Speaking of this, note that many of their employees use Windows on their  
boxes daily and just from inside of virtual machines they test, develop and  
maintain range of products - this was told to me by a guy who worked in their  
network lab for a longer period before - actually he was mine idol before  
swapping his honourable aims for easier to get greed).


8.| I am saddened by lengthy legal review processes inside AMD/ATI management  
and need for binary files in order to make use of acceleration and playback  
decoders. This can be triumphed only by unfair practices pushed against  
adoption of salvation standards like WebRTC, SPDY, WebGL, HTML5 and libre  
codecs e.g. Opus, Daala, VP9/WebM.


9.| There needs to be a social movement against these f**kers and  
establishment support by creating multiple political-activism groups in  
similar manner to Pirate Parties. Also, consumers should pressure the  
manufacturers to release specs and get rid of global-scale trade secrets as  
enforced by treaties like TPP agressively exported from U.S. elsewhere.


10.| Dear Trisquel community, I appeal on you, stop trolling and pushing camp  
dividing agenda. One schizophrenic Linux news portal and (in)famous test  
suite.. such opinion skewing is handy to big market players and marketers.


Footnote: I would like to thank Chris for state-of-the-art ThinkPenguin  
ultrabook, it is for those who have disposable annual income. Also,  
congratulations on getting second Respects Your Freedom sticker! Well-done.


https://www.fsf.org/news/a-second-fsf-certified-device-from-thinkpenguin-long-range-usb-wifi-adapter-with-atheros-chip


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-26 Thread lloyd

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Good. I think a bit of competition in this area will be a healthy thing. I  
don't know enough about it to decide between X, Wayland and Mir, I guess I  
need to do some reading. Interesting times!

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Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-26 Thread silverslimer
In the effort to get free software to the widest amount of people possible,  
Trisquel SHOULD focus on one of the lighter desktop environments like LXDE or  
XFCE not only because their requirements are low but also because the system  
is not likely to change its functionality in any extreme way any time soon.  
Right now, Trisquel is using what is essentially a modified Gnome 3 when it  
could just as easily use an unmodified XFCE to get to the same result.


If I had any say, I'd remove any link Trisquel has to Debian and instead have  
it be based on Fedora. It doesn't take much to make Fedora free software  
(Freed-Ora is available) and the repositories generally contain  
faster-running programs which are also at a more recent version than what  
Ubuntu or Trisquel currently offers.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-26 Thread onpon4
I would have to disagree wholeheartedly about Fedora. Fedora reaches  
end-of-life much too soon and has far too many things just not working on any  
given release for beginners.


Xfce, I'm not sure about. In particular, I didn't understand why the sound  
would mute itself so much for a long time (it's related to headphones being  
plugged in and what Xfce does to the volume of individual devices), and I  
don't think most beginner users would have the patience to try to find out.  
They would just assume that the sound is broken and blame GNU/Linux.


LXDE doesn't have anything like that, but it doesn't handle volume controls  
(e.g. what you find on a keyboard) properly by default. I wasn't able to  
figure out how to fix this.


So, out of lightweight DEs, I think LXDE is the best choice for beginners,  
but I still think GNOME, Cinnamon, KDE, and MATE are better choices in  
general for them (not Unity, unless it's a modified version that removes the  
automatic online search feature).


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-25 Thread lloyd
If MIR is free and works with GNOME, then it's worth considering for  
Trisquel. We could potentially use Mir with GNOME3 shell and software  
rendering as the default setup, with the option to install free graphics  
drivers where they exist.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-25 Thread andermetalsh

What about XFCE4 ?


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-25 Thread Dave Hunt

I've heard good things about it but have not yet tried.



On 06/25/2013 10:24 AM, andermeta...@lavabit.com wrote:

What about XFCE4 ?


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-25 Thread gnufreeme

Is it significantly slower using the software rendering?


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-25 Thread gnufreeme
I'm guessing X11 will still be packaged. Otherwise Kubuntu et al. are in a  
lot of trouble.


I agree with Andrew.  I think x11 will still be packaged and available. Also  
since we do not use Unity anyway Reuben is used to putting in a significant  
amount of work into the UI.








Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-25 Thread mikko . viinamaki
No, if you have a badass CPU. But it is significantly hotter and thus very  
soon louder.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-24 Thread ahj

Notice that the CPU can now render GNOME Shell. No need for 3D acceleration.

Ah, this is excellent news!

Cheers


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-24 Thread Julius22
Le Sun, 23 Jun 2013 14:40:57 +0200 (CEST),
ll...@lloydsmart.com a écrit :

 The Debian question is interesting. Debian is certainly a superb
 distro, but basing on it presents a new set of issues to address.
 Chiefly, the extremely slow release schedule for stable. Whilst this
 is a positive thing for users who require an absolutely rock-solid
 stable distro, it can be a big disadvantage in the desktop space,
 where users generally desire the latest and greatest features.

I wanted to react to the last sentence (users generally desire the
latest end greatest features). Where does this statement come from? I
always questioned myself about it.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-24 Thread Andrew R .
On 24/06/13 08:00, andrew wrote:
 On 23/06/13 21:07, ahj wrote:
 So Ubuntu 14.04 will have Unity 8.0 and Mir as their default DE and
 display server. What will this mean for Trisquel?
 
 I'm guessing X11 will still be packaged. Otherwise Kubuntu et al. are
 in a lot of trouble.

This link was just posted on Slashdot:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_itempx=MTM5NDQ

Andrew.



Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-24 Thread tegskywalker
If Mir turns out to be pretty good and more flexible than X11 or just more  
modern and efficient, why not test it out instead of writing off entirely?  
Don't say you are going to take sides with Wayland either... that project is  
stagnant.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-23 Thread ahj
The other thing I was thinking of was that if, in the future, Trisquel will  
return to Debian as its base - perhaps gNewSense could amalgamate with  
Trisquel - or at least share development resources, since both distros would  
be sharing a common base, both technologically and politically.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-23 Thread lloyd

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This news about Ubuntu 14.04 is indeed troubling.

To be honest, I'm not sure what the solution is - but I think it's pretty  
clear that it will become harder and harder to provide a free distro based on  
Ubuntu, as it becomes less and less free.


Gnome 3 is definitely the way to go for the default DE, IMO. I currently use  
it with the nouveau 3D driver on my nvidia card, but have used it  
successfully with an intel chip in the past. For users who have neither of  
these, perhaps software rendering of the gnome shell is the way to go?


The Debian question is interesting. Debian is certainly a superb distro, but  
basing on it presents a new set of issues to address. Chiefly, the extremely  
slow release schedule for stable. Whilst this is a positive thing for users  
who require an absolutely rock-solid stable distro, it can be a big  
disadvantage in the desktop space, where users generally desire the latest  
and greatest features. One of the advantages we have from being based on  
Ubuntu is that they base on Debain Testing, and do QA for us, essentailly  
providing an accelerated pathway for new packages and features to become  
relatively stable. We would loose that by basing on Debian Stable.


We could base on Debian Testing, which would bring us new features more  
quickly, but that would place a huge burden on the Trisquel release team to  
do a huge amount of testing, QA and patching, prior to each release,  
essentially doing the job that Ubuntu currently do - a job which I sense they  
simply do not have the resources to do.


Despite having an understanding of the predicament (I think), I don't  
actually have a good idea for a solution at this time - does anyone else have  
any suggestions for a good distro on which to base future versions of  
Trisquel? We'll need something current but also not too dependant on non-free  
software, so that the effort required to liberate it is not too great.


Of course, I don't speak on behalf of the Trisquel project, and am not  
associated with them in any way, except for the occasional donation. Their  
view may be that it's perfectly appropriate to continue basing on Ubuntu in  
the future.

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Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-23 Thread ahj
I think a Debian stable + an optional backported Linux-libre kernel  updated  
mesa driver stack could work well - kind of what the Ubuntu LTS point  
releases are doing.


Sure, the programs might be a bit dated, but you can always add program  
specific PPAs.


An interesting (although impractical option for Trisquel) would to have a  
Debian sid based 100% libre distro. Now that would be cool. Effectively  
rolling release, fresh, but not bleeding edge software, and a guarantee of  
100% free software. I suppose Parabola already fits that model, but from what  
I've heard anecdotally, Debian sid is actually more stable than arch and has  
a richer repository of programs.


Still, I think the Debian stable + optional updated core components could be  
a nice way to go.


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-23 Thread lloyd

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You might be on to something there. But IMO there would have to be a few more  
backported packages than just the kernel and some drivers. A web browser, for  
example.


PPAs are great, but we don't want users relying on them too much, because  
they often contain non-free software, or software that wouldn't otherwise be  
allowed in a distro like Trisquel.


Actually, Debian is already pretty much free. No binary blobs in the kernel,  
no non-free software in the default repos. The main reason given by the fsf  
for not endorsing it is that:


Debian also provides a repository of nonfree software. According to the  
project, this software is “not part of the Debian system,” but the  
repository is hosted on many of the project's main servers, and people can  
readily learn about these nonfree packages by browsing Debian's online  
package database.


My reading of this is that someone could create a free distro by simply  
mirroring the free repos from the Debian servers, and re-branding with a  
different name.


If Trisquel took this approach, there really would be minimal work for them  
to do. It would be limited to back-porting anything they feel was outdated in  
Debian Stable.

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Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-23 Thread onpon4
Trisquel already deviates from Ubuntu's choice of a default DE. I doubt this  
change will cause many problems.


Also, isn't Mir free software?


Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-23 Thread Andrew R .
On 23/06/13 21:07, ahj wrote:
 So Ubuntu 14.04 will have Unity 8.0 and Mir as their default DE and 
 display server. What will this mean for Trisquel?

I'm guessing X11 will still be packaged. Otherwise Kubuntu et al. are in
a lot of trouble.

 I'm assuming Ruben will want to keep GNOME 3 as the default DE - how 
 is he going to implement 2D support?

GNOME Fallback is still being maintained at the moment, AFAIK. I recall
it being released with 3.8.

 Will Trisquel 7.0 have to be based on Xubuntu or any other *buntu 
 derivitive that supports Xorg?

The GNOMEbuntu might be one to look at as well.


On 24/06/13 00:12, onpon4 wrote
 Also, isn't Mir free software?

Yes, it is GPLv3.

Andrew.



Re: [Trisquel-users] Fear and Uncertainty - Trisquel 7.0

2013-06-23 Thread tegskywalker
I run MATE from the official PPA in Trisquel 6 and it has worked fine for me.  
The default implementation is rough around the edges and I decided to purge  
it out and replace with MATE.


It works well and the low system resources are why it is my preferred DE.