On Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:12:11 -0500 "Luis A. Guzman Garcia" <[email protected]> wrote:
> > trisquel distro has no menu for hardware drivers. I don't know how to do > > it > > and feel bad asking for help on here with installing a non free driver. > > In short words, you can't, i mean even if you try. > AFAIK the deblob scripts from Linux-libre that are run over the trisquel's > kernel prevent non free firmware or drivers to be enabled. Yes, the deblob script of linux-libre prevent proprietary firmware drivers of being loaded at all, even if they are in place on your hard disk. This is not a perfect solution and it has been discussed at the linux-libre list AFAIK. They are still looking for another way to do the deblobbing which allows loading of proprietary firmware. So option 1 - installing Trisquel with proprietary firmware - is not possible. I agree that installing Ubuntu is the last resort before installing a complete proprietary system. So I would suggest another option: Install Debian. Since Debian 6.0 their kernel is regarded as free as linux-libre by the FSF, if I interpret [1] correctly. As long as you don't add the non-free section in your sources.list you are almost as free as with FSDG distros like Trisquel, disregarding some small differences between FSDG and DFSG. If you have to use the proprietary firmware you either can a) add non-free to sources.list or b) download the driver form Debians non-free package repo and install it manually. I would choose option b) since adding non-free is a bad idea and may lead you to a situation where you accidentally install non-free software. This option is still not good, but is preferable of installing a distro which doesn't care about free software at all. [1] http://www.fsf.org/news/debian-squeeze-makes-key-progress-toward-being-a-fully-free-distribution
