Rubén actually did that already with Trisquel 5.5. I think it was a hack of
Gnome pieces though for the fallback. I'm not involved in the development
aspect of Trisquel and haven't done development really for a long time (well,
I occasionally file bug reports, and work on customising a particular
distribution for mostly personal use, but that hardly counts, and
occasionally a little coding).
All in all I'm not sure this fallback design choice is the best way to
continue forward. I understand the problem and and see why it was done
though. A combination of factors. It would require more work to support two
versions basically (fallback and 3d). The project doesn't really have the
resources to maintain two versions.
I think ultimately we shouldn't sacrifice features just because some users
haven't got the supported hardware. What matters is that the 3d Unity is free
(and other similar components we can use) and that there do exist graphics
chipsets with free drivers that we can use.
Moving forward means telling users that there bad choices have caught up with
them and a hardware upgrade is now required to continue using Trisquel. This
will have a positive impact on future support as it increases the demand for
free software compatible hardware. It gives people a reason to support free
software who might otherwise not (people who are using it for "open source"
philosophical reasons rather than free software ones). This is a perfect
example of why "open source" is an undesirable / less desirable position to
take.
It is actually kind of humorous. I'll leave the names unlisted to avoid an
argument here although the people advocating open source or who say they just
don't care get mad at those who follow the open source movement's position.
As far as I'm concerned the only question about the transition to 3d is when
will the appropriate time is to institute such a major change. I think that
change should be made within the next two years probably. Ultimately people
will have had a 3-6 year time span in which they could have purchased a free
software compatible system. If we assume 4-6 is average very few people
should be forced to upgrade who had no-choice at the time they purchased
their system.
