Re: [Trisquel-users] Start up directory for Trisquel Mini?
http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Autostart ISTR the system and user based LXSession autostart:s have Trisquel-mini instead of the Lubuntu in the example path there.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 will be released next week.
Sorry! Quite by accident you happened to hit on a form of words often used by a local minority to open bartering in my youth. I suggest you go here https://www.thinkpenguin.com/about And either get their GPG key or use the contact form to speak to Thinkpenguin direct. Chris has posted here since your last update, so might have already missed it once. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Penguin Wireless N USB Adapter Love it!
From: onp...@riseup.net Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] Penguin Wireless N USB Adapter Love it! Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 14:18:44 +0100 (CET) Where are you reading $44? I'm reading $24.97: https://mediacru.sh/XHRkfMW0wYXG My tests show $24.97 via Tor, $40.59 from the UK, $44.00 from Sweden. I think @Chris has some serious explaining to do...
Re: [Trisquel-users] No Handbrake in Belenos?
Please open an Issue/Bug - handbrake for Toutatis was taken from a ppa. From Trusty onwards it's in Universe so the Trisquel arrangements need changing.
Re: [Trisquel-users] compiz 3d windows not working :(
The Compiz in T7 is a binary copy of the Ubuntu package and isn't on the T7 install DVD, so upstream is in fact where you should report the bug. Further AIUI adding your name to a bug on Launchpad improves its chances of getting attention from Ubuntu - so it's worth doing. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Arduino Free software friendly?
From: legimet.c...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Arduino Free software friendly? Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 23:05:41 +0100 (CET) Just go up one directory and you'll see two directories with source. Oh, thanks - I've just skimmed it and it seems you are right. My excuse is I was doing too much at once, I think the modern term for it is multitasking :-).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Arduino Free software friendly?
Apologies for this being a bit of a brain dump, but here's what I know related to your question. The Arduino software is free software and the hardware designs are available under a free (of some sort) license. There are several arduino related packages in the repo. Do an apt-cache search arduino To see them. Among them is arduino-mk which AIUI provides command line tools to use with arduino boards. You need this for the first sort of alternatives I know of: * Alternatives to the Arduino's implementation of Wiring (which is the C++ library Arduino sketches are written against). The first alternative is to program directly against AVR libc http://www.nongnu.org/avr-libc/user-manual/modules.html Which is what the existing arduino sketches software is built on top of. Another alternative is to program directly in AVR (or ARM for the Tre) assembler. Essentially, you have the board circuit diagrams and the chip datasheets for all arduino boards. So you are free to approach them in exactly the same way any other embedded microcontroller project is. Pick a suitable GCC supported language and write/find the core libraries. * Alternatives to the IDE: The only alternative to the IDE for Arduino sketches I've used is an Arduino mode for GNU/Emacs which AFAIK isn't in the repo. But I haven't made extensive use of it. [1] Here are some VIM sketch syntax support pages for Arduino[2]. Hope this helps. [1] http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs-en/ArduinoSupport [2] https://duckduckgo.com/html/?q=arduino%20mode%20for%20vim
Re: [Trisquel-users] Is Arduino Free software friendly?
Oh, and a search turned up and AVR plugin for Eclipse[1]. If you want a full fat GUI IDE for your C/C++ Arduino development, including sketches if arduino.cc is to be believed[2]. [1] http://avr-eclipse.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Plugin_Download [2] http://playground.arduino.cc/Code/Eclipse
Re: [Trisquel-users] I'm thinking of installing replacing my Trisquel systems with Debian for the sake ofo wifi because I really need it right now.
+1 Ending up using Trisquel GNU/Linux took over 20 years of two steps forward one step, one step back progress for me and I still falter at times. A suitable fully free system wasn't available for much of that time and isn't always now. So e.g. I still have to use Debian for ARM based Maker projects (BeagleBone Black). If you were go away with one thing I would say: Learn to maximise your software freedom.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Atom Text Editor
Yes
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7.0 Installation issues
A fair number of WiFi chips need non-free software which Trisquel being free software only doesn't provide or support. So this is most lilely your problem. For now use a wired connection and then either get a free software compatible USB WiFi from this list: https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom or Thinkpenguin do free software friendly PCIe cards which fit some laptops, however, speak to them first as not all laptops will let you change the internel (PCIe) WiFi card because of manufacturer anti-features. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7.0 Installation issues
I use the mailing list interface to the forum. So I wasn't trying to gainsay you - my inbox refreshes just worked out that way. We've both made perfectly good first line guesses so Anders is doing right by trying both.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Possible Memory Leak?
If you look at the upstream bug which will fix this it's scheduled for inclusion in 14.04.2 which is due February 2015. The Trisquel Issue is marked Upstream pending that.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 will be released next week.
The Trisquel 6-7 upgrade method is documented here http://listas.trisquel.info/pipermail/trisquel-devel/2014-October/000869.html But I don't know if it'll work with Triskel (KDE). So do those backups quidam mentions in the instructions. -- Andrew 'Leny' Lindley GPG Key fingerprint = AB3F DF36 512E 1EE1 9055 A8C9 62C6 5508 B625 C793
Re: [Trisquel-users] Tp link librecmc wifi router on an isp modem with public address?
More testing has shown, that wifi transfer rates vary and sometimes the wifi disconnects. Placing a router antenna at another place did not improve the wifi connection. I think, I will return to the isp router. You wrote, set mode to 40mhz. In wireless network master - device config - advanced settings - ht mode, I can select 20, 40 below 2. and 40mhz above 2. Which one shall I select? I'm *guessing* here but the below / above 2 is probably a reference to which channel you've set your WiFi to run on. The variable speed and drop outs you mention could well be interference from other stations from time to time. Which suggests you should do a WiFi survey and find a better channel, then set your 40MHz mode appropriately. I am unable to help you with the WiFi survey as I use an open source router to do mine.
Re: [Trisquel-users] I'm back.
Yet Another +1 for Orca on behalf of my Dad. It was important to his sense of independence for a goodly amount of time.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Pro/Con thinking of getting the TPE-NWIFIROUTER
I guess my only concerns are 1: Is it likely to have any compatibility issues? 2: Is it likely to have many bugs or reliability issues? And 3: Will I be able to keep the software up-to-date? Given it's such a new offering and LibreCMC is a new distro the best answer I can give you is as far as the software goes OpenWRT, the upstream, has an absolutely sold reputation in respect of your three items. I can't see why LibreCMC wouldn't inherit that. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Pro/Con thinking of getting the TPE-NWIFIROUTER
Maybe @Chris from Thinkpenguin will answer, in the meantime: The Reddit criticism is mainly from people who don't believe the freedom is first priority. As one commenter points out the age of the chipset is not really a detriment if the speed is adequate to your Internet connection's speed. The other criticism seems to be of a similar nature - from someone who buys the latest thing with the biggest number rather than take a realistic look at what they actually need and will use. E.g. a recent review of 802.11ac routers on the register.co.uk pointed out that only one laptop they knew of shipped was capable of 400Mb/s speeds, let alone faster. So the poster talking of 900Mb/s probably needs their x substitute complex checking. The Trisquel thread is about how someone with more time than money might be able to buy the same thing and flash it themselves for less. Then about how it is not an ADSL router - which it plainly isn't and the need for an additional ADSL to Ethernet modem (which I'm personally not convinced is what he's getting from his ISP in a meaningful way) is well known and documented. Of note is that if you want to run the risk of doing it yourself there is also a very specific revision of one model of a Buffalo ethernet router supported by LibreWRT, another GNU FSDG / FSF approved small system distro. Other than these two for purpose built routers the rest are merely shades of grey and black risks in respect of security and Five Eyes/Snowden issues. (E.g. one major UK ISP (BT) mandates its own router which is known to have a backdoor considered to probably be for the use of GCHQ, police and others). As someone else has pointed out before on the forum the third solution is to use a second desktop [e.g. your old one] with a second NIC, WiFi and a switch. However, AFAIK there are no libre firewall distros so there'll be quite some config work. Plus the power/space requirements rule this out for most family homes I know of. The bottom line is the TP router being preloaded, having vendor support and RYF certification is a win for most people. Which is why I pre-ordered one of the new batch. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Pro/Con thinking of getting the TPE-NWIFIROUTER
For those who know I use ADSL and are wondering why bought one. Have you heard what RMS says about the UK and followed recent news here? I need a trustworthy router as an endpoint for the VPN to Sweden I bought. Theresa May and other friends of the Viewers and Listeners Association can go whistle. :-) Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] I'm back.
Like many males when under stress I favour what psychologists call the 'distraction strategy' and installing GNU/Linux is my favourite vehicle for that. So e.g. the installs I did in the late beta, early RC phases of Belenos were more to do with my Father getting to the stage where he no longer recognises family than anything else. For a three month spell last year I re-installed Trisquel changing the DE every week after phoning a lifetime friend to discuss how his chemo was going. Sometimes it's a different distro, then I'm back to the freedom of Trisquel within a few days out of principle, not stress. Or maybe a couple of weeks play if it's a free distro. That's why I keep *the* spare machine, my previous desktop. I'm not sure whether that makes me a distro hopper or not. Frankly I don't care as it's a lot cheaper and healthier than either more booze than is wise or comfort eating both of which appear to be much more popular habits for the same thing (not that they're always that). Therefore, since it's mostly a matter of re-installing Trisquel with a different DE on the spare machine, perhaps I should say 'Trisquel is good for your health.' :-)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel on a iMac?
And now I'm using a real keyboard... If you want to run the risk that it might be that all you can do is see how pretty T7 is by booting the LiveCD then: In the past (around the vintage of your machine) I found iMac optical drives finickier than many others. So after md5sum or gpg --verify -ing your image again (maybe there's a one bit error which only matters to Macs) then try burning at a slower speed (say 24x CD) on a different machine. CD-R is better than DVD+/-R when such things are a problem. Depending on what Mac boot firmware is/has been like you might alternatively try a USB Disk Creator made USB stick as AIUI that uses a different boot loader. But the outdated Ubuntu advice is to use optical media.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 and new homepage - gratz!!
It looks like the Tor Button is still packaged with the [optional] Icecat. But Icecat is not the default browser as was initially planned.
Re: [Trisquel-users] trisquel-mini performances
Trisquel Mini 7.0 uses LightDM not LXDM so it can't have the problem. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] trisquel-mini performances
I see no reason to comment on the sort of dyspeptic bile which is classically associated with lonely single men who have consumed too much booze. I recommend you ignore it. As to your performance problem - running which apps? There are many which will put a strain on a 512Mb computer, regardless of clock speed. The nVidia graphics probably won't be good enough for many 3d apps etc. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Re : trisquel-mini performances
On Sat, 1 Nov 2014 21:16:09 +0100 (CET) fr...@openmailbox.org wrote: You mean the apps I use could be the main problem ? It's right that I sometimes use two or three apps at the same time : GNOME Mplayer for music and abrowser or midori for browsing for example. I also often use audacity. Now for example, with midori opened and a movie copying from my hard drive to a usb stick my cpu is 100% used all the time with half of my ram memory. Should I run only one app at a time to have a good speed ? Can adding some ram fix the problem ? Concerning my graphics card I renounced using 3D apps until I have no money for buying an intel one. I can't find any of my graphics cards, even the olders, on h-node. Apps like Abrowser could be part of the problem with so little RAM. But I'm afraid the movie to USB stick thing is actually GNU/Linux's excellence - You can tie up almost any GNU/Linux machine with the right amount of disk copy. I/O is so efficient it runs *fast* and consumes noticeable resources. But RAM yes the old trick with a computer for everyday rather than games use was to favour spending on RAM over CPU speed - because RAM was the most significant constraint. A 512Mb machine would fit with the size of computers when that was the advice. So add as much as it will take would be the plan for yours, it's relatively cheap. Specialists like mrmemory.co.uk often know the right ram and max it will take for a given machine (use their website to find out without buying). Search Youtube for a video of how to fit it, if that fails a blog/web search should turn something up. The nVidia point was sometimes the free driver doesn't have proper GPU clock control - with either newish or very old. So your nVidia GPU could be running a lot slower than it can. However, I haven't checked for your model and it's not a laggy screen all the time which would be the symptom you've complained of.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free hardware and open source and hp printers?
This is the page (and the 'Supported Printers' link there) [1] to goto to find out if a HP printer is supported by the free software hplip driver. You might need a version more current than in Trisquel 6.0 if your printer is more recent. There are a couple of methods to get the latest version on that page. [1] http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/downloads.html
Re: [Trisquel-users] Owncloud Tray icon loading on top of gnote
From: myself...@opmbx.org You don't have to verbally offend me just because I'm speaking from experience and haven't searched online for an answer. Yes, it looks like the problem is upstream, however, ever since Gnome Fallback turned default in Trisquel, the Indicator Applet _has_ problems like this (i.e. misplaced/disappearing tray icons). I have similar problems to this day with applications like Vidalia, PeerGuardian Linux, and JDownloader. The F in STFU is understood as equivalent to Firmly in my culture. Which is how I intended it, mere emphasis. You're in need of this https://xkcd.com/627/ If you haven't got searching the web before filing an issue is 101 stuff and most questions here can be answered / fixed by doing it. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Looking for an email provider
From: m...@mtjm.eu (Michał Masłowski) Parabola for the YeeLoong is not bleeding edge, it's unmaintained with mostly broken and obsolete packages. gNewSense is the only FSF-endorsed distro with current support for MIPS. Thanks - I haven't read the appropriate trees yet :-) gNewSense will be quite good enough for me. In my experience, YeeLoong 8101B used ~12W of idle power. Several ARM single board computers will use much less total power at 100% CPU use (with much lower idle power: they have good power management). Yes, naturally, IIUC lower chip count. I'm looking forward to the Mali reverse engineering making it to mainline (which debian-arm reports as close). Then with Freescale documenting everything else for some of their SoCs we might see something from the community. Maybe even an arm64 box (just wishing mainly).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Looking for an email provider
From: svh...@gmail.com Have you bought something from the webshop? Where do you get software for the Lemote Yeeloong 8089B 8.9? Do you know the power consumption? The link was given by someone else on this list/forum a little while ago. I ordered one from there about a week past, it was marked dispatched promptly and understandably I'm still waiting for it. Beware other stuff on the site might be cheap dodgy electronics when it comes to things like non-branded graphics cards (or at least that's the reputation of stuff from Hong Kong sites). The site has an 'as described' guarantee so I'm hoping branded stuff will be OK. But as always the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Maybe the original poster will comment. The Lemote Yeelong 8089B is supported by gNewSense and Parabola GNU/Linux both GNU FSDG / FSF approved distros like Trisquel. gNewSense is the other .deb approved distro, Parabola is bleeding edge and considered a quite technical install. The power consumption is listed here[1] as 20W. And no I couldn't justify buying one at those EU prices. :-) Leny [1] http://www.tekmote.nl/epages/61504599.sf/nl_NL/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61504599/Products/CFL-004-2
Re: [Trisquel-users] is trisquel not worth to mention in prism-break.org?
Trisquel removes all known privacy invasive features of Ubuntu. If you find or hear of new ones, file a bug. Prism Break had a lynching mob for Ubuntu for their privacy invasive features. And by the well known feature of such 'justice' derivatives were caught by contagion - just like a medieval court. There is no evidence to support their decision wrt derivatives other than paranoia. Don't worry about it.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Looking for an email provider
Some points: - What's your problem with riseup and A/I user base mostly being activists? That's not a good reason not to use them. - $61.80 is _not_ expensive for an email service which even the goverment where it is can't legally pry into. Two coffees a month - come on! - You can use GPG with gmail if you access it using a suitable MUA like Thunderbird Enigmail. - With all these services but the Swiss based ones the Five Eyes exposure at the server end is from an inadequate secret legal process. This isn't the most significant part of the Five Eyes/Snowden problem, it's the fact your email metadata is subject to snooping using Traffic Analysis when it crosses international boundaries. Which will happen regardless of where you have your email server. Further, in the UK and some other jurisdictions law enforcement have access to the same data from ISPs and telcos under still weak in terms of due process systems. So IMO the net out of all the above points is - use whichever email provider you like as long as you can use it with your own local MUA and GPG. And use those all the time for personal email.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Looking for an email provider
Running your own mail server on one of these http://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/6254519313.html (i.e. a Lemote Yeelong at a = singleboard price) is a more freeom preserving proposition. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] making a free bios for a present notebook x86 mainboard?
AIUI some organisation paid big money for the reverse engineering and coding involved in porting coreboot (free bios) to the x60 because they really wanted it for a big contract. And money along with dev time skills are the main limiting factors in why we don't have more supported laptops / desktops. RMS/FSF have said 'more reverse engineering please' to urge more devs to do it, so things might change.
Re: [Trisquel-users] US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' To Amazon
We'll have to agree to differ.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel Enhancement Project reaches version 0.1 alpha milestone
Much the same thing here[1] was an out of date glib. If you're running 32-bit on 64-bit it _might_ be a missing library. [1] https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=170648
Re: [Trisquel-users] tp link free router, what is gained by that?
From: svh...@gmail.com https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/free-software-wireless-n-broadband-router-gnu-linux-tpe-nwifirouter is a free router. It is a tp link tl wr841nd router that has librecmc http://www.librecmc.org/librecmc/wiki?name=TL-WR841ND installed. Thinkpenguin says, the router has to be v.8.2. I got told, that a router may be a combined router modem or just a router. Is the tp just a router? If that is the case, then what do you gain by using the librecmc tp router? There is no free modem? As jxself says it's just an ethernet router. But for many types of broadband connection that is all you need e.g. many modern cable connections the ISP provides a modem and a separate ethernet router, the same with what's known as FTTP (Fibre To The Premises). As per the D-Link DSL-3780 thread here there are often security problems with cheaper 'consumer' grade broadband routers or router/modems. This is because the manufacturers build them at lowest cost and that includes skimping on the firmware. Maintenance on them is an expense and therefore is skipped or ignored also. So a router which uses a libre firmware distro is going to be more secure to start with. In particular AFAIK OpenWRT, the open source firmware distro which is LibreCMC's upstream, hasn't had a significant security problem in ages. Further as with all free software distros any security bugs are given priority attention which is often not what you'll get from a manufacturer. With router modems one of the reasons for there being no libre firmware is that it would need an expensive telecoms certification. It's the same with the modem code in Replicant phones - at present it's proprietary and even if someone wrote a replacement then the users freedoms aren't really there because if they changed the code and did their own build they would need to pay for certification to be legal. There are open source firmware distro supported ADSL modems which have blobs. These are still a better bet than a manufacturer's firmare build, because the security problems are usually in other parts of the firmware build. Just you still can't trust it completely and won't have all your freedoms. So I suggest you follow networking best practice which is to have an ethernet modem (this free software one) inside that. Leave the network zone in between to be your DMZ for Internet facing services and stuff for which there is no free software replacement as yet. Then put the free software computers and devices in your inner network. That's what I and a friend do.
Re: [Trisquel-users] US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' To Amazon
From: n...@blueyonder.co.uk Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' To Amazon Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2014 06:11:43 +0200 (CEST) If I remember correctly, abuot 8 or so years ago, someone in America applied for a patent to cover the act of putting food in the mouth, chewing and swallowing it - in order to hilight the absurdity and general brokenness of the US Patent system. Alas, as with so many Thanks, I didn't know. It was probably carefully chosen for its patentability. Mine was chosen for the humour. other areas of life - the Corporations are ruining it but are so rich and well connected they can buy politician's silence and complicity. The single biggest problem we face in the modern era is the concept of 'fiduciary duty'. If could get that redefined to include social responsibility, we'd have a chance, but whilst every business and organisation is mandated to act only in the interests of financial improvement, everything else gets trampled in the process. I'm not knowledgeable, wise or intelligent enough to work out what the key difficulties in a complex evolving human system like capitalism are. TBH I suspect nobody is, and even if there was someone and we had a definitive answer it would be exactly the same situation as climate change - there'd be those who claimed and campaigned otherwise in the face of what is proven and now obvious fact. However, I do know the answer to the problems, which as you're using Trisquel you know already - do something about what you believe. Personally for economic matters I favour the 'Think globally, act locally' approach which is applicable to many large problems. E.g. buy from ethical traders or fairtrade/ethical products and service where available. So in the UK make your supermarket the Cooperative. Work for or start an ethical business. And so on. Ghandi said something like 'You have to live the tomorrow you want today.' It takes surprisingly few people doing that to change things. Just a few can change a whole nation. Go watch the current film about the LGBT community helping out miners during the strike here in the UK. That was the seed of all the related legislative change in the UK since. As per Spain today, and the million who marched trying to stop Blair taking the UK into the Iraq War, you can have many more protest and change not happen.
Re: [Trisquel-users] US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' To Amazon
From: gra...@openmailbox.org Sorry, I forgot... Don't worry about it, neither of the two incidences (one is lower and isn't yours) actually make me look as boring or as foolish as I actually am :-).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Backdoor ids in D-Link DSL-3780 Home Broadband ADSL2+ router.
From: milind...@gmx.com After doing a little reading, it would appear that Netgear, D-link, and Cisco have some sort of backdoor. If you're concerned about router security, I'm guessing DD-WRT or some other open source firmware is something to consider. http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/20941/hacking/netgear-linkys-routers-backdoor.html Yes, it's DD-WRT I've tried and has proven unstable. I'm in the process of loading OpenWRT on it now. It's a Buffalo WBMR-HP-G300H [-EU is the submodel of this particular one]. It's now supported in OpenWRT stable so I'm hopeful. The recent history of this class of device, including some from this manufacturer, having backdoors was a factor in why I decided to go public with this.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Backdoor ids in D-Link DSL-3780 Home Broadband ADSL2+ router.
From: arielxgbar...@gmail.com So cheap £40 routers are entirely unaffected? (obviously appart from backdoors. As per the DD-WRT homepage, the bash bug doesn't impact a typical router even when it's installed (which you can with community WRTs like LibreCMC) because mostly there's no network facing use of bash. To rehearse something I've said in another thread - for the purposes of a typical Trisquel user, then the instruction has to be put all the security patches on as and when they become available. However, 'pro' security patch practice is quite different from that advice. Just doing what the 'pros' do and not making a mess of it is something most people don't have the knowledges, skills or time for. So, again, keep putting those patches on... I do at home to save the time despite being capable of doing otherwise.
Re: [Trisquel-users] US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' To Amazon
From: n...@blueyonder.co.uk 'Er, the phrase prior art springs to mind.' USPO allows patents on human genes so why not metabolic reactions? All it will take is an expensive patent attorney. :-} Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] US Patent Office Grants 'Photography Against A White Background' To Amazon
From: gra...@openmailbox.org 'Then won't it be illegal to breathe?' Only if I won't license the patent to you. Which I'll do for no fee for most people. The people we don't like is an entirely different matter. E.g. Bill Gate's license fee will go towards paying for more free software. How much an hour do you think I should charge him? :-)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Backdoor ids in D-Link DSL-3780 Home Broadband ADSL2+ router.
Thanks, I must admit when I did the research on this one I didn't read absolutely everything to see if it was new, but I couldn't find any record of these admin logins being known. There're other outstanding security problems with this particular model and many users will have a worse similar exposure from leaving the completely daft default userid/password unchanged. So with the rep of these things I thought it would be worth blogging what happens when you contact the manufacturer's designated service agent (the ISP in this case) telling them which lines in the GPL source bundle need deleting. So far as per their reputation would be the summary. Of course no sensibile person trusts the zone their telco CPE is in in the first place. Accordingly I already had a replacement, which with there being no libre ADSL2+ is the only ADSL2+ device compatible with blobby WRT distros. The first of which has proven unreliable in use as its a very long running beta (but that's very different from insecure).
[Trisquel-users] Backdoor ids in D-Link DSL-3780 Home Broadband ADSL2+ router.
For your convenience a copy of my blog entry from here: http://andrewlindley.co.uk/2014/09/30/diary-on-needing-a-sledgehammer/ pMy disability apportions me a healthy dose of randomness. Accordingly this weekend I had a firtle in my ISP provided broadband home router and the GPL source bundle for it duly downloaded from the manufacturer. There in and amongst the build configuration files was the setup for two backdoor admin logins complete with passwords in clear. A bit of testing proved they were extant in the router as shipped./p pSo in search of what one is supposed to do about such things I consulted the relevant pages at a href=http://cert.org; title=Computer Emergency Response Team target=_blankCERT/a. 'The vendor' they say. Of course there's no magic high priority contact for security matters when it comes to home routers. Thus after a journey involving an esupport website bug, the manufacturer's 10p/min support line referring me to my ISP, the first call I made to my ISP being disconnected by someone who didn't seem to understand what a security bug is, and another person who evidenced lack of comprehension I finally ended up speaking to a manager in my ISPs helpdesk router section./p pHe expressed patent disinterest and came up with a spurious logic rationalisation for there being no need to fix it. I reached for the sledgehammer of promising publicity if the matter was not pursued. The result was a change of tack and some reassurances in a tone which wasn't exactly convincing. Nor has anyone with a more appropriate technical or security brief at the ISP subsequently contacted me to confim they've received the report and are actioning it. I have, therefore, little confidence that the matter is being dealt with correctly./p pBetter name and shame then, the router is the D-Link DSL-3780 as shipped by Talk Talk who were the ISP I spoke to. Technical details of the vulnerability are available in response to signed GPG email. My fingerprint is AB3F DF36 512E 1EE1 9055 A8C9 62C6 5508 B625 C793. Use the email address at this domain in the key./p
Re: [Trisquel-users] Fix for the GNU Bash shellshock vulnerability
To which I'll add: Debian Wheezy armhf hasn't patched yet either, so Ruben's not alone. And there was another bash USN overnight, so as bash is Trisquelized we can assume Ruben would work on that for Toutatis first as it's the stable release.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Fix for the GNU Bash shellshock vulnerability
To which I'll add: Debian Wheezy armhf hasn't patched yet either, so I'd better clarify that as 'hasn't patched to the latest level.'
Re: [Trisquel-users] Learning self-defense
Trisquel uses AppArmor which is an easier to configure alternative to SELinux. E.g. last time I looked in Toutatis the supplied Samba and CUPS are running under AppArmor profiles to help protect against zero day attacks. I suggest you learn this instead (Search the web).
Re: [Trisquel-users] is email a communication protocol?
Well said leny2010. Thanks :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] is email a communication protocol?
From: adel.af...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] is email a communication protocol? Date: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 18:50:54 +0200 (CEST) Thanks a lot Leny; that really helps. STMP, POP, and IMAP are free, right? And then there are other proprietary alternatives (as you said)? I'm not sure what the free software community would call them, or what the definition, if any, of a free standard is. But in industry speak they're open internationally accepted standards from a reputable independent body which are not patent encumbered. This is the 'gold standard' for any sort of standard. Things like ECMA standards are often argued not to be of this kind. Internet standards, including email, are in the form of what are called RFCs (Request for Comments - a name of historical accident) and are coordinated, managed and approved by the IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). Here's the RFC homepage http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html Personally I find many of them quite readable and understandable (but knowing a local University if you're a student or recent graduate YMMV). In the email ones you'll find things like a definition of spam and other things which you might not expect in a technical standard. There aren't really proprietary _alternatives_, because effectively all global email between arbitrary parties goes over the Internet for some of the time[*]. It's more that things like Exchange, Notes, and Groupwise date from before the time the internet protocols became dominant. Thus they do their own proprietary thing between themselves and talk internet email protocols to the rest of the world. E.g. historically Exchange was as is typical of M$ an adopt, modify, and subvert of part of an open standard. Internally it at least used to be an X.500 message store. The X.400 suite, which includes X.500 were in vogue at the time. Similarly uucp (which is in the repo) and Fidonet were originally designed to transfer their kinds of email (and files) over POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) acoustic modems in the same era or earlier. Computers literally phoned each other up. Neither of these has email protocols like SMTP, POP IMAP, they're really file transfers over modem where email files are dumped in the relevant spool location. Mainframe email of that era worked on the same principle - spool to spool copies. My first connection to the Internet was through a uucp connected machine through email. AIUI you can still get most of the Internet's content via email from some server or other (e.g. RMS is said to fetch web pages that way - no nasty Javascript of course, so it's not all web content). I've even seen a mention of the email anonymizer chain still being in operation (but send to it via Tor). * * * After spell checking I notice I'm still using the old correctness. The Internet i.e. the global network is a proper noun, there is only one, and has a capital i. But an internet is any network which uses internet protocols. Oh my what a dinosaur. :)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Thunderbird has been sucking a lot lately.
There are all sorts of things it could be and you should suspect before Thunderbird. So some first questions: Have you checked your ISP and email provider's service status pages? If not do so. Does it happen everytime you send an email or vary in any way? E.g. time of day / week Have you stopped any torrents or other P2P you're seeding? If not do so. Did you make any changes to your home network / WiFi in the run up to it starting to happen? From your email address it looks like you might be using an email provider rather than your ISP's facilities. If so have you tested via another Internet connection? E.g. plug an Android phone in via USB and turn tethering on, take a laptop to a public WiFi hotspot. If not do so.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates?
From your first quotation I wasn't the only one to be misled by your tone. Agreed. ISTR from around 2013 Trisquel was then 7 or 8 years old. If it's that old and the actively contributing community is small then you've got to figure that the 'build a community' mode of some [often successful] free software projects has not been copied. A more open communication style has to be part of that method. Ruben as the BDFL carries the can for this. His narrow communication profile, geek subculture method or not, is obviously a strong candidate as part of the problem. Further the bits where he's not best practice geek method - such as an overlong patch acceptance cycle time make matters worse when you consider the limits of normal human persistence. Thing is from what I can workout the median number of active contributors to a free software project / initiative is one[1] because an awful lot of people are making similar mistakes. Ruben at least seems to have learnt part of this and be addressing the dev community matter with infrastructure now. Hopefully he'll move on to upping his communications game too. I will observe that many so called 'geek subculture' behaviours are in fact what any kind of geek will devolve to left to her own devices in almost any setting. My own Father e.g. was a farmer, a 'farming geek' and exhibited the same lamentable communication style failings as Ruben. I know and have known plenty of other non-FLOSS technical geeks who do/did as well. In the final analysis free software is but 30 years old, at this stage we're all pretty much still making it up as we go along. Given Ruben has had the smarts to keep Trisquel going for this long, I think we can expect him to work out what the next few steps are and have a good chance of success. [1] LibrePlant 2013 IIRC.
[Trisquel-users] Anybody using an nVidia 650GTX with jxself's kernel?
I'm asking because the July Phoronix round up of free software driver GPU performance has it that the 650GTX is the Fermi/Kepler card with gpuclocking support and I'm lusting after the triple head it would bring. So, if you're using this combo is it stable-ish enough?
Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates?
From: D. A. H. dh...@freedommail.co Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates? Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 13:23:20 -0400 I tried an upgrade of Trisquel 7, and apt-get cannot download any updates from us.archive.trisquel.info (404 not found) on all. I'm currently successfully downloading them from es.archive.trisquel.info . Your problem might well be a mirroring thing, wait a bit and try again.
Re: [Trisquel-users] is email a communication protocol?
From: adel.af...@gmail.com Subject: [Trisquel-users] is email a communication protocol? Date: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 21:17:20 +0200 (CEST) It's a free communication protocol, right? IMO email, formerly e-mail or electronic mail, is a communication method not a protocol per se. Protocols are used when you use email, but they can be anything from the SMTP/IMAP/POP internet set, through UUCP and Fidonet (older open email formats) to proprietary offerings and things which belong in history like X.400. Essentially what you've asked is 'is the telephone a protocol?' Yes there are phone protocols, but the telephone itself isn't one.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates?
From: blade.vp2...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates? Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 14:16:24 +0200 (CEST) greenman you said what I want to say This is the truth with regret. I think we should Move to parabola As Ruben indicated the delay is a temporary situation occasioned by him (and presumably Aklis) commissioning a new system. Thus if you want you can take temporary measures by reviewing the missing patches' announcements on ubuntu-security-announce and perhaps look up the CVEs on cert.org. So e.g. to take the openjdk-jre one, the package isn't Trisquelised so you could just do a point install by downloading the Ubuntu package. It'll be exactly the same package when it arrives in the Trisquel repo. For a typical personal PC/laptop user only the remote vulnerabilities are of concern. And even then unless you're using them in an Internet facing situation (e.g. browser, java plugin) then the risk is significantly mitigated for a typical end user because they're almost always behind a firewall. However, the reality is plenty of people ran Debian testing without security support and not a few longer delays than the current Trisquel ones for security patches for years without adverse effects. Yes, it's not a good situation, but as I've said elsewhere - it's not terrible either - DON'T PANIC.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates?
From: legimet.c...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates? Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 15:47:44 +0200 (CEST) Where is this new infrastructure Ruben talked about? If people are going to help out, there needs to be some code, but I don't see it. The bones of it are documented in the now defunct Developer Meeting IRC logs here https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/developer-meetings Given I can only help bits of the time I haven't pestered Ruben for updates on it since. So e.g. jxself, Thinkpenguin Chris or SirGrant might well know a lot more about what shape the idea has now. But the plans were for a tailored gitorious instance and a new separate community repo. Aklis was tasked with the gitorious instance. So with the community repos AFAIK you personally wouldn't need to put your Abrowser KDE mods in a PPA, Trisquel would be capable of hosting it for you. I dunno your IT background so the following might be teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. To answer your question, where is the code? AFAICT in the process of commissioning not development. Replacing or adding to a current live system with a new one based on the final copy of the live data is always a tricky business no matter how carefully one plans. There's nearly always a stoppage for final testing and unanticipated stuff which turns up and takes additional time no matter how careful you are beforehand. In terms of real life business systems, going live transferring to a new system like this over only a weekend is really good work for a whole team at SME size. There'd be a lot more complaints and fallout if a new system was commissioned and it had bugs and data errors (e.g. a three week old package repo) which resulted in a prolonged period of unreliable service. These days there can't be alphas and betas for an extant distro repo of course. So contrary to what some people seem to think this delay is probably proper quality professionalism in the face of very limited 'IT department' resources. The official launch date (i.e. when its intended you can use the new function) and documentation may or may not come at the same time as it goes live (i.e. when patches start flowing properly again). Depends how Ruben has it scheduled, it might be a Belenos release date announcement thing based on his assessment of bangs for the buck for supporting alpha/beta during Belenos development. So you personally might have to find him and ask if you want to use it straight away. But really someone like you should be able to work it out from just having the relevant hostnames if they're anything like decent web services. The above is just from general principles and a bit of published info. As I say others who, unlike me, are 'in' the team (jxself, aklis, sirgrant et al) might well know a lot more - it's just that, as I'm sure you'll agree, getting the system live and testing it is a lot more important than answering our questions which just slow the process down if they're involved at all. Which for the benefit of unhappy onlookers is why Ruben doesn't talk to us much. It once took me three months to develop an ~8K line billing system in a language I can mean over 300 lines a day in over an entire project when it's just me (you would too, it never was worth spending the time to learn to code VB at full speed). The rest of the time was spent dealing with the boss as he explained his latest great idea for the system (which was always in the spec I'd given him). Similarly wanting Ruben to talk to us more and wanting more from the distro are mutually incompatible, IMO he's doing the right thing ignoring us.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates?
From: legimet.c...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] Where are all the security updates? Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 23:07:43 +0200 (CEST) I agree with you, the developer should be reachable and not ignore everyone. This is a free software project, and people should be able to contribute. If you look at trisquel-devel, the last post was in July. I think people have realized that submitting patches is futile because Ruben never looks at them. Hang on, I've had one patch accepted in the past and think I understand why my few others weren't. Also you've mentioned some of your patches have been accepted off list. So Ruben does look at them. Ruben's communications behaviour might well appear lamentable, and there will be better communicators in the free software world, perhaps many. But he admitted to missing some patches in the first developer meeting so he'll have fixed that and the evidence above is he has. So if some of your patches haven't been accepted - he'll have his reasons.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Driver for Ralink RT2790?
Not generic firmware, this particular firmware. 1-2K GBP is sort of what a geenrous boss might offer in kind to an employee to 'rescue' that amount on their own time when the source has been lost. Yes, if you're actually paying commercial rate for it - no way. I guessed, perhaps wrongly, you might attract a hobbyist developer for a bounty at that price. Further the bounty rates I've seen like Squirrelmail[1] aren't even mid-90s UK commerical rates, and it'd cost you more just to issue an invoice than people were offering Trisquel for somethings. So unless I'm wrong about bounties rather than actually hiring someone to do it, which would be a huge amount more in the UK, you should start a side line in 'running your own free software business' courses. :-) [1] http://squirrelmail.org/donations.php#smbounty
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel 7 as guest on Aqemu
I can run the Triskel 7.0 Live CD with the qemu-system-i386 command which is much the same thing. Sounds like you might not have defined enough virtual machine memory. 2G is recommended for modern desktops, so that'll definitely be plenty if you can spare it.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Driver for Ralink RT2790?
I think you've missed that I've been discussing this in the manner of a Medical Examiner dictating the details of the corpse she's dissecting. Like many Brit's I leave editorial to peoples' own intelligence, they can easily presume from me being an Associate Member here and FSF I am committed to free software ideals. While I'm in agreement with the broad sweep of what you say, and specifically that non-free blobs are not to be used (I'm using Trisquel so that's obvious) and simply GPLing the code that uses it is a wrongness, it simply is the case that the drivers with GPL licensed blobs are legally free. Just a poorer kind of free which requires reverse engineering work to turn into a good type of free. But then we are a free software community, so as RMS has said let's not limit ourselves to picking low hanging fruit, rather let's encourage someone with one of these card to RE the firmware. Which is where I came in in one of these RALink threads. Until it is REd and we have source then Trisquel will not include it because it is merely a technical kind of free and I endorsed that policy. The terms free and non-free seem to lead people into the known human psychological weakness of dichotomous thinking. Aka black and white thinking. Complete software freedom being possible on ones desktop, laptop and some routers helps this along a bit. We should remember that the objective is absolute software freedom, where it is mandated by law globally. Until that day (which we won't live to see) then best practice is to maximise ones software freedom in _all_ devices, which means its shades of grey and personal judgements - not a duality. So yes we can judge if something is fully free and always seek that, but regrettably at present like these blobs there are cases which are a different grade of free. Note that here in the EU it is illegal to RE to replace (but not to inter-operate). However, a GPL blob should logically be REable because it's simply changing the form of something which is already free and so the licensing explicitly allows that (IANAL). So there is potential benefit in GPL blobs over non-free license blobs even though both are an unpleasant and unnecessary hindrance. I haven't done any RE since my 8-bit days, but with my ISP replacing my router for free in preparation for fibre this last contract renewal I have my old one set aside to practice on and have bought a cheap USB JTAG for the job. Obviously I've lot a to catch up on because I've not done that much coding in the past decade and no embedded since 1998. My memory of 8-bit RE is that it was more laborious and time consuming than properly difficult. As RMS once said there are few things software which actually qualify as difficult (c/w some math, physics, medicine e.g.). Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] SSH/SFTP to access free webhosting?
Try using the word gratis next time. Everybody here will know what it means and at least in the UK its a loan word that's been in common usage for ages and ages. Anonymous means I can't pay. I don't have a direct answer to your question. However, there is probably some paid web space in Switzerland you can buy in full guarantee of anonimity backed up by their privacy laws (STFW). AIUI in the UK you can use whatever name and address you like as long as it's not in furtherance of a crime. So buying one of those pre-paid 'credit' cards under an assumed name is quite possible if you want anonymity. Maybe you can do that legally in your jurisdiction too. If you are UK based then remember we have so many CCTV cameras to all intents of purposes the panopticon is already upon us. So your anonymity in buying the pre-pay card will still have limits. of two bit sites using harmful code and harmful plugins. Again, sorry, but talking about unfree Javascript while having flash installed is plain stupid to me. Love your BS detector, please mail me one. :-)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Driver for Ralink RT2790?
IMO wrong order Chris #1 financial resources All the others are reliant on them. Always has been the case. That's why I buy from you when you have the sort of thing I need, take out appropriate Associate Memberships, sponsor fundraisers etc. Software freedom won't happen on the sector economy we have so far . Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Driver for Ralink RT2790?
Maybe crowdfunding would be a good idea? It is, but we also need things like a huge raft of small free software businesses using all the different business models in April's document on them. Amongst my friends in proprietary stuff students being 'Linux(sic) until graduation' is a joke. In the UK for most young people it's internships at best, but usually unemployment or government training courses until age 25 or so which is when employers think you're fit to be a sariman. Well with a laptop or PC with Trisquel installed you've got all you need to start a whole range of IT small businesses from your bedroom. And if you make enough take out a Corporate Associated Membership with Trisquel. And this isn't 'Oh the youth of today.' I'm disabled, I've spent the last 13 years being very busy 'not dying.' Science has improved so I'm recovering well now, from where I am a one person free software business looks like what I'll be doing in two or three years time because almost nobody actually employs disabled people. I want more than a few months crap part time here and there as soon as I can.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Searching for Open Wifi
ISTR the coreboot notes on the X60 saying something about a security processor. Probably it'll have it's own ROM and thus qualify for the auxillary processor exception in RYF. Possibly that's the culprit. I'd expect something like that to have difficulty phoning home over the freedom friendly WiFi card Gluglug replace the Lenovo provided one with because it'd have to drive the hardware directly. Looking on the bright side, once we know where it is sending the info to you should have a ready market for these libre routers you've mentioned are upcoming. All Gluglug owners will be wanting a router to which they can add an IPtables rule to block the outbound traffic... :-).
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Driver for Ralink RT2790?
I'm not sure if we're just having a combination glass half full/half empty and semantics argument. However, I'll explain why I affected the nonce term 'legally free.' GNU FSDG rightly excludes both blobs and obfuscated code under free licenses because they interfere with users' meaningful use of the freedoms. Which is perfectly true in the case of all users. However, if it's under the GPL then in the special case of users with the right skills they can make meaningful use of those freedoms i.e. turn a blob into proper source, deobfuscate the source. So it seems to me over the blob you're echoing Solomon Burke's 'none of us is free until we're all free' whereas I'm saying 'someone is free and can free us all.' What term we use for this is a matter of semantics. I just picked something out of the air. It being GPL also prevents lots of kinds of proprietary license blob impediments e.g. patents we can't license, supposed trade secrets we can't publish and ATI/AMD's prohibition of reverse engineering. ATI graphics drivers are therefore IMO in a worse position than the GPL blob RaLink drivers - we can't get out of AMD/ATI's trap. I think of the others you mention as 'open source community stuff,' which covers things like the garnishing with proprietary code gratis or not, the habit of copyright holders also selling the code under a proprietary license, etc. You know, all the ways the users freedoms and rights are treated as less important than money, number of users, shiny thing features or whatever. :-)
Re: [Trisquel-users] When is 7 stable coming out?
I have some mid-priced Logitech 2.1 speakers that had me thinking that once after an upgrade. Turns out they needed switching off and leaving unplugged from the PC for five minutes - just something in the amplifier circuitry playing up and it was coincidence. I suggest you try the same, might not work but unplugging/replugging/rebooting to double check it's not hardware/transient is a good sense first move with anything computer. With GNU/Linux being so reliable you have to do it less often and it's less often the culprit, but it's still first base IMO. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] When will I have support for my wireless? :( RT3290
From: gary02121...@gmail.com Subject: Re: [Trisquel-users] When will I have support for my wireless? :( RT3290 Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2014 19:03:01 +0200 (CEST) I just got the free driver, thanks! How do I use it now? Looking at the actual code and firmware myself it's a really bad licensing compliance mess, so don't. Get a replacement card or USB stick from Thinkpenguin instead. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Driver for Ralink RT2790?
The Debian page[1] for the driver talks of them removing the firmware from their kernel, so presumably it's non-free. [1] https://wiki.debian.org/rt2860sta
Re: [Trisquel-users] Feels better to be in this forum than on Facebook
Yes, but they are Cuban cigars. :-)
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
I'm in broad agreement with you. However, at present Trisquel
development is pretty much Rubén alone. So until those of us who are
making fools of ourselves :-) on trisquel-devel make the grade and we
have more devs then it's Hobsons Choice really ('Like it or lump
it.'). By all means chat away about what you and others would
prefer. I'm sure it does get seen, and is a contribution. However,
it's perhaps meet to add a dose or practicality to your collective
expectations.
Re: [Trisquel-users] On the NSA targeting readers of Linux Journal as extremists
What is the purpose of storing someone's IP?, doesn't it change every day or something, unless they have a static IP, which most people do not? The NSA will probably be able to cross reference it with Goggle/BookFarce cookies or something like that. :-(
Re: [Trisquel-users] WordPress, DruPal, Joomla! or any other CMS ?
FWIW in the past I've advised Drupal for medium to large enterprise customers who have the resources to deal with the version sheer you get with Drupal's various author plugins on subsequent upgrade. Other than that I go for TikiWiki CMS which although inappropriately licensed under LGPL is maintained as a complete whole. The code isn't exactly pretty either. For personal use Wordpress is the right answer for most people. That said it's always a case of Mileage Varies. Someone who codes fluently could run a Drupal site even if they were a small enterprise as Trisquel is/does. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Re : Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
The polkit-kde-1 thing was fixed in 6.0.1. Cool. Then who can close the ticket I opened on that very subject? https://trisquel.info/fr/issues/10293 I didn't know about that one. I've emailed SirGrant who is able to close Issues.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
Actually, the 6.0.1 package doesn't depend on polkit-kde-1, but the 7.0 one does. So I don't think it's fixed in 6.0.1 yet. I did a Triskel install from the 6.0.1 netinst and didn't need to put polkit-kde-1 on. It might be that the actual package dependencies haven't been fixed. However, as the netinst is the official media from which one would install Triskel I think it counts as fixed. Leny.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
It should still be added as a dependency. I installed from the regular Trisquel iso and installed the triskel package. (I have both GNOME and KDE) Rubén said in the developer meeting where Triskel was dropped that defect support was now limited to the packages on Trisquel install media, all others (apart from GNU FSDG bugs obviously) were to go upstream. So it's a reasonable inferrence from known policies that fixing subsequent Trisquel install media will have to do. While I agree that all bugs /should/ be fixed it's a question of resources limiting what can be, Kubuntu who have more resources dealt with the absence of polkit-kde-1 in a subsequent release AFAICT. No distro has the resources to fix all the bugs in any given release in that release, so a fix in a later release is the norm for lower priority bugs. The bug is only an inconvenience and therefore low priority as the bypass/resolution is written all over the web on a search of the symptoms. To personalise the above - what is a better use of the time you personally put into writing patches - fixing this and other Trisquel 6 bugs, or installing and testing the alpha by making it your daily system then fixing any bugs you find in that? Your R6 fixes would have to be forward ported so the answer is surely as we want each release to be better than the last the more testing and fixing the new release gets in development the better. In a case of severely limited resources as with Trisquel there's a strong argument for 'all able hands to the pumps' is there not? Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
... As in fix R6 bugs in the R7 alpha. we can always tell a user to move to the latest release. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
I'm sure if someone were to develop a better look and submit the patches on trisquel-devel they would be welcome. Fiurther the R7 alpha is out, so the code base is there to work from if someone wants to re-theme Trisquel . If people don't have those skills then becoming an associate member in the hope Trisquel will eventually be able to pay for devs, web monkeys and graphic designers to do the work is the next best move for a better look to the distro. Then there are plenty of other ways people can contribute to a distro in this case first amongst them being to recruit more users in the hope some of them will become devs or paying members. If you're not inclined to any of those then at least consult a dictionary on the meaning of 'finite' and think for a bit.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
The mention of Kubuntu was to indicate that a distro with a lot more developer resources took ages to fix the same problem with their kubuntu-desktop metapackage (and haven't backported it either). If they are 'lack lustre' in fixing this sort of thing in a timely fashion what is a 'one [part time] man and his dog' distro like Trisquel going to be like? So to restate: Yes, agreed 'should be fixed' all bugs 'should be fixed.' But this is a case of the inelasticity of finite resources. We got fix attempted in the next ISO release and then because there was limited testing of it (mia culpa) not the 'correct' fix until the release after that. The latter just like the equivalent upstream bug seems to indicate. As it stands the bug is confirmed fixed 'properly' in a subsequent release of Triskel, which is 'good enough.' Matching Kubuntu's performance on a similar bug in their distro seems to be good work for a one part time dev distro to me. I'll point out one line bugs still need diagnosing and the fix building and QA/testing neither of which are necessarily in proportion to the number of lines changed. If it was as simple as a small source change, which many bug fixes are, then there'd be a lot more bug reports with patches attached. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
The polkit-kde-1 thing was fixed in 6.0.1. I test installed Triskel 7 today. Some rough edges but it seems to have inherited pretty directly from Kubuntu this time e.g. Amarok is the default audio player and there's an empty cruft Firefox short cut in launcher favourites. IMO it's still very usable though. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Default desktop in 7 still looks horrible
Oh good! I'm perfectly happy with that, and IIRC Linux Action Show described it as 'one of the best Gnome 3s we've seen.' YMMV.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Canon MG5200 -- Nonfree Printer Drivers
People with jobs don't have time to post on internet forums in most cases. It's just that simple. I'd expect you to say that Chris, you work for yourself. The experience of myself and friends is U.S. megacorp offices are often much like the UK. There's an awful lot of facetime B/S. Everybody saying how they've been there since 06:00 when the security guard disarmed the alarm for you at 07:00 and yours was the only car in the car park at 08:00. Leaving five minutes after the boss's car leaves the lot and claiming they were there until after midnight. Working for yourself eh :-) I do mailing lists for relaxation when my concentration fades during the day, ten minute break - sometimes I get carried away. A digital native will have written twice as much on their smartphone while going to the water cooler. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Compile Trisquel from Source
The only non-essential peripheral it has is an external hard-drive. If it's a USB HDD turn it off when you're not using it. USB HDD controllers sometimes lock up, e.g. after a couple of days, and some MOBOs don't like misbehaving USB devices. When I say non-essential I mean everything USB other than the keyboard and mouse should only be switched on when it's needed.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Compile Trisquel from Source
First, the source ISO is there so you can study and change the source for the programs on the install CDs as per Freedom 1. You can't build the whole of Trisquel from it because that's tens of thousands of packages which won't all fit on one DVD. You could build a Trisquel install CD from the DVD. However, the Trisquel developer git repos contain a better way of doing this if you have a decent Internet connection. Second, I seriously doubt recompiling Trisquel specifically for your system is the right thing to do for your problem from your description. You haven't given us any of the answers to the who, what, why, where, when and how questions of software problem diagnosis which would evidence that it was necessary. Have you done the basic things like unplug all non-essential peripherals and checked the logs for things like kernel oops if it happens after that?
Re: [Trisquel-users] dvgrab: Error: no camera exists
The bug you quote is for Natty, most likely it's not that. Try making yourself a member of group video and logging out then back in again. That should fix any permissions problem you're having.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Developing free software
Without the key information of what you're thinking of developing and what the target environments are any advice will be vague and approximate at best because it is always a case of horses for courses. That said I can say definitively from the free software point of view not Java or anything targeting Gnome's Mono engine. They're both proprietary originated systems and have a range of patents on them which might bite the free software community later on. This is also the FSF advice. If you're setting about writing GUI applications then the general wisdom at present is you should use a language with automatic memory management - handcrafted memory management does less well on larger projects and makes for additional coding and debugging time. So combining this with Qt as you've mentioned for RAD you might try Python, KDE's qdevelop with its python plug-ins, Qtdesigner etc and later in development profile the program for performance hot spots and recode them in C/C++. But the best advice for performance has always been to look at your algorithms first, poor ones are what eat the CPU cycles usually. Now for some opinions on related matters which others might find contentious. Free software and open source software has a lot of apps which are developed for one widget set or another. The various desktop environments have each a smaller range of apps targeting them. I suspect this is because people fall into the 'popularity trap' RMS mentioned and want their app to run in a wide range of desktop environments including proprietary ones. IMO free desktop environments are in need of a full range of apps specific for them so that we have the hope of a future 'killer app' bringing the cause new users. So choose a DE. Further I believe free software developers should deliberately ignore users of non-free systems. If users of such system want a specific free software app, let them port a fork of it themselves - the free software community should not spend time on it. The idea that we have enough free software developers is a myth, it was known in the late 80s that the demand for software development exceeded the world economy's ability to pay for it and the situation is worse now[1]. So IMO free software developers should not waste their time, which is in a sense a community resource, on pandering to people who RMS justifiably calls fools. Combining the above two with RMS's GNU 30th speech point of 'people are picking low hanging fruit.' Don't do the 'me too' thing of writing yet another media player etc. It's mere vanity. I'm not saying you have to write a large super app. But e.g. go look in a computer store at some of those apps that cost $50 or under. Things like a GUI outliner (which there are a selection of for the Mac), or a clone of 'Write Your Own Novel (Professional)' are a much better proposition. They add to the variety of free software. Remember FSF canon allows you to use non-free software in order to code a replacement. Similarly free software is especially in need of more games. Lastly, a word on the supposed 'wisdom' that developers should use a bleeding edge distro like Parabola GNU/Linux. I find it very hard not to indulge the British habit of swearing at such nonsense. I have over 30 years in software and am under various NDAs etc so I can't give details but I have seen sums with lots of zeros go down the tubes from this practice. Developers must have a very stable development machine. Use a chroot/LXC container/Parabola under KVM or whatever for the target environment, but keep your actual development desktop O/S stable, the less change the better. So set up you development environment on Trisquel, hand compile any additional libraries you need and set up some virtualised targets. You'll need to for the other GNU FSDG distros once you've released your app anyway. [1] If you think about this - there not being enough money to pay for the software we need you will realise that the open source community's purported reasons for success are vacuous. The reality it is because the code can be shared / modified etc as guaranteed by the four freedoms they are riding on an economic incentive to make software for a lot less money. They may have a lot of users but they are fooling themselves if they think there's any other reason than money for them being there. The free software community OTOH has grown and is about an ethical commitment, the fact that there will always be free riders doesn't detract from our achievements, we've never pretended to ourselves we have some quality magic or anything like that. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Re : Why the GPL doesnt focus on freedom keynote from OSCON
It is a perfectly witless proposition, has the fool never heard of the Tragedy of the Commons? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Re: [Trisquel-users] Compile Trisquel from Source
OK, From What I Know / AFAICT you would create the same infrastructure layout as Trisquel but use the Trisquel repos as your upstream not the Ubuntu ones. Your package helpers would tailor specific packages to give you your distro's branding, desktop etc. Hack makeiso.git to build your own install disk using them. If you're going to run a .deb distro you will need to read package maint-guide. My guess is the main problem RMS will have been thinking of is the fact that ordinary distro repos are littered with packages which have GNU FSDG compliance issues. Using a GNU FSDG distro as upstream saves you most of that effort, although I think to retain GNU FSDG status yourself you would have to accept compliance bugs. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Compile Trisquel from Source
However... The essence of the above is that all you're doing is creating some custom packages and building an install disk using them, the rest is stock Trisquel. Ruben has said Trisquel will be getting community a repos. So in principle you could create your custom packages and put them in the community repos. Build your own install disk with the community repos already enabled and have a Trisquel Remix. Then you wouldn't need your own infrastructure. Of course you'd have to ask Ruben about that. He's best contacted as quidam on #trisquel on freenode. Leny
Re: [Trisquel-users] Youtube with aBrowser 30
I've just upgraded my machine to test and I've managed to watch the first three videos I chose. I've got Abrowser 30, xul-ext-youtube-all-html5 (from the repos) and have visited youtube.com/hmtl5 and turned HTML5 on. I've not got Gnash, Linterna Magicka or any of the other Youtube methods installed.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Wonderful news for Gluglug X60 owners
Have you tried the increase screen brightness key as recommended in the instructions for this eventuality? Fn+Home on mine. This key might 'wrap,' i.e. go black just after you reach max, in which case there's a command line fix also in the instructions. Failing that there's a guide to debricking in the instructions again, but most likely you just need to increase the screen brightness because it said 'VERIFIED'.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Correct partition and File system type for an external hard drive.
If you format your USB HDD ext3 then other people who use legacy systems can access them if they search DuckDuckGo for microsoft windows ext fs apple mac os x ext fs There's no need to compromise your own software freedom. I suggest you recommend they upgrade to Trisquel as a first move as per the FSF campaign if you think they'll listen.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Re : Correct partition and File system type for an external hard drive.
magicbanana wrote: I agree. NTFS-3G is free software (GPL license). Except the U/S Patent Office allowed M$ a patent on FAT on silicon drives years after FAT was publicly available because a different type of media constituted a novel step. At the time (early 90s IIRC) M$ set the price as ~$250K for anyone who wanted to manufacture say an SD card. So choose free software originated file systems for your media if you live in or visit such jurisdictions. As a general point it's proprietary systems which are incompatible and GNU/Linux the free/open defacto standard not the other way around.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Wonderful news for Gluglug X60 owners
I 3 my Gluglug too. Props to ahj for mentioning them here before they got RYF certification[1]. I got a bargin as a result. [1] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/gluglug-thinkpad-x60-w-coreboot-mini-review
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Software Alternative to Citrix Receiver?
mdunivan wrote: What should one recommend to replace Citrix's XenApp Server? LTSP is supposed to be popular in education. http://ltsp.org/
Re: [Trisquel-users] Free Software Alternative to : Software Toolbox Top Server?
Have you tried a search yourself? The first non-sponsored link in a DuckDuckGo search for ' open source toolbox opc server ' seems to mention several.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Can connect to wireless and wired network, but not the internet
You've posted here, so I'll assume you can still connect a different machine / device to your network and get the Internet at the same time you can't with the Trisquel box. My first guess is you've done exactly as you've implied in the thread topic and had both wireless and wired connections active together at some point. Even if there's only one at present use the Network Manager panel / taskbar applet to disconnect all current network connections then reconnect just one when the disconnected notifications have all finished. If you've not been caught out by this 'power user' feature and your Internet still doesn't work then we need to find where exactly the problem is. You'll need your router's IP address for this which, unless someone's changed the default, will be printed on one of the labels somewhere on the router. IP addresses are easy to spot because they're written as four decminal numbers between 1 and 254 separated by dots. Most home routers will start 192.168, so look for something like 192.168.1.1 . Now open a Terminal window (in the Accessories menu and type the following three commands on one line each, following each by pressing the enter key. ping -c 3 your router's ip address ping -c 3 208.118.235.148 ping -c 3 gnu.org Make the obvious sustitution for your router's ip address of course. Then copy and paste the commands and their output into a text file on a USB stick (there's a text editor in the Accessories menu), open it on another machine and copy and paste it again this time into this thread.
Re: [Trisquel-users] Startup Disk Creator Inaccessibility in Trisquel 6.1
yesTrisquel 6.0.1. Please describe how you created the startup disk and what form the inaccessibility takes.
Re: [Trisquel-users] how to use 1920*1080 res in Trisquel in Vmware workstation ?
legimet wrote: VirtualBox Guest Additions which you will need to use are non-free so don't. Not if you're on 6.0 and you install the packages in the repos, but I wouldn't use it anyway. Thanks for the correction. Checking the web I'd remembered correctly, they were non-free back before Oracle bought Sun. So I'm out of date. As with you I still wouldn't use it for the reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Leny2010 / Andrew
Re: [Trisquel-users] Trisquel Makes It
IMO there's a significant element of how recent the distros last release was in the Distrowatch rankings. Which given the central portion of their homepage is given over to recycling distros' release announcements most recent first is unsurprising. Or to be more direct, I consider it irrelevant media froth. If it were otherwise then Raspbian which will be on the majority of the 1M Raspberry Pis shipped over the past 18 months would be listed in the top 100 above many of the distros that are there. (An observation, I'm not recommending the RPi).
Re: [Trisquel-users] DSL modem
So... is there any way I can connect to ADSL using free
{soft,firm}ware?
Short of getting a big research grant to test all the ADSL routers
with GPL software in existence there is no way of answering that.
SoC manfuacturers are crap, to give you an idea there's probably over
a thousand different ARM SoCs with GNU/Linux bundled with them and
precisely two have got enough code into Linux mainline for Debian to
support them from their mainline based build process.
If not, that's disappointing. In that case, could someone recommend
the least bad solution? ADSL and 56k are the only two connection
methods available to me, and realistically I can't get by with
dialup
speed, so it has to be ADSL.
If there is no completely free solution, what's the most free, if
there is one? Is it the Solos PCI card? I'd rather not use the
non-free blob, but if it's the only way for me to connect to the
I have already answered this. Read the DD-WRT.com homepage and then
lots and lots both there and on OpenWRT and work out for yourself if
the Buffalo WBMR-HP-G300H is working well enough to do what you want
right now. If you're concerned about your internal network security
then read the Linux Networking HOWTO and Network Administrators'
Guide and see if constructing a DMZ barrier your side of the ADSL
router with one of the LibreWRT supported Buffalo routers is a good
thing for you.
Flashing a router with beta firmware must be backed up with lots of
careful research, there are many gotchas. So make sure you do the
legwork first.
A 56k modem will have non-free firmware to process the AT commands in
any event. So you'd not gain any freedom.
The Solos will _never_ be supported in Trisquel. Why move to a
non-free GNU/Linux for your PC for the sake of a PCI card you don't
nhave to use? Better putting the proprietary poison in a different
physical box IMO.
Internet, I'll have to, right? I mean, it's gotta be better than the
proprietary Linksys router I'm using now.
To quote myself 'Always seek to maximise your software freedom.' As
of now getting by without any devices with non-free software, or
indirectly using some businesses etc use to provide goods and
services to you (e.g. banks) is impossible. So simply maximisng is
all you can do.
Leny
