Question: What's the advantage of using pure free software?
For normal people free software has many advantages. This list is not
exhaustive but you will get the point.
1) Free software doesn't spy on you. People who write free software are
concerned with user freedoms so they don't write spyware. If it does somehow
make it into a free software project it is a big hoopla.
2) You can copy the software. This means none of that bologna where
microsoft makes you activate your OS on each computer you install it on.
3) It doesn't have malicious features. Again microsoft if you install their
OS and don't "phone home" to activate it they will disable your computer
after 30 days. Free software doesn't have things like DRM/time-bomb features
in there.
4)Mentioned above but the constant updates are nice.
5) Freedom 0: You can run it for any purpose. None of that "for students
only" or "only for non-commercial purposes" bull. If I want to run the
software in my business, school, or home it doesn't matter. I can and I
don't need anyone's permission.
On your "annoying facts":
1) You miss the goal of a free OS then. The goal of a free OS like Trisquel
is not to be the fastest. It is to be totally free. Don't get me wrong
there is nothing wrong with being fast or user friendly. Trisquel tries to
do both (and I think it does a good job) but that is not the ultimate goal.
2) This I would agree is true (except that it is the GNU/Linux community).
If you have any ideas on how to improve this problem we are open to ideas.
We are looking to start a marketing team to work on advertising
trisquel/bring in new members. If you are interested let us know.
3) I agree that most people don't hate non-free software because they don't
even know anything else. I have had to educate people on this. I try to
explain that the nvidia drivers are non-free and they say "but I didn't pay
anything" (a different problem altogether). They are just ignorant (I am
using dictionary definition here, not saying they are stupid) about the
software they are using most of the time.
On your ways of contributing to free software:
1) I don't understand how you got this conclusion at all? Firstly buying a
mac does nothing to support free software. Apple is almost totally opposite
of the free software goal. They want to control everything about your
computing experience. Also adobe flash is a dying breed soon to be replaced
by HTML5. Why is this a highlight?
2) I don't know what you mean by "fancy of release" but we promote and
support the releases of all
[https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/list-free-gnu-linux-distributions free
distros]. I don't know what you know about the history of the GNU project
and free software but having a fully free OS was basically the original goal
of the GNU project. We have it now and we are constantly working to make it
better. I have no idea why you think we should stop. We also do promote
LibreOffice. We include it in the distro and therefore copies of it are
distributed to everyone who downloads and installs the distro. We are
grateful for all kinds of free software. But we will stop working on
releases of GNU/Linux. That would be giving up on one of the basic building
blocks of the free software movement which you claim to respect.
