Sense of Direction
For being an Ubuntu based distro, the benefit for the Trisquel team is that
there is a company out there (Canonical) that is testing their packages for
the Ubuntu release that others can benefit from. Kinda like with CentOS and
Scientific Linux where Red Hat puts a lot of money into their Enterprise
edition and releases the source code. Trisquel can go back to being a
straight Debian distro, but more effort would be needed to bring consistency
to what is essentially a rolling distro. Linux Mint does this with their
Debian edition and they have had to resort to "update packs" to bring some
sanity back.
With all that said, there still is somewhat of a lack of direction for the
Trisquel project since it is essentially one guy handling it all. I don't
know if people don't want to help or its an ego thing, but it slows down the
release. Ubuntu is on a strict 6 month schedule and Linux Mint gets a release
within a month after the Ubuntu one. I know that the Trisquel team goes to
the beat of their own drum, but when they rely on Ubuntu releases that can
have short lifespans, it is important to get a Trisquel release out as soon
as possible. Especially if anyone wants to deploy this in the enterprise and
the Trisquel team waits a few months and the end user loses at least 3 months
of support when they install.
Attitude on the forums
I have always been super gung-ho about this operating system since I
installed 4.0. What drew me to the OS was how beautiful it was for a Gnome 2
based distro and the strict adherence to free software. I not only installed
it for myself, but other family members who had no issues in using it on a
daily basis.
I do admit I have been passionate in my views on these forums, but as of
late, I am getting verbally attacked and called a troll. The post I have may
have genuine information and opinion, but it doesn't matter to some people.
Of course if I respond, I always have someone contacting Ruben asking for my
banning and he emails me. I have never resorted to name calling on these
forums and it shows the maturity of some of its users.
Conclusion
I know this is a long post, but I have thought about in the past to
contribute to this project either by donating or buying something on Think
Penguin. Soon after my viewpoint changed after I got the impression that many
people on this forum are somewhat cultish and extremely passive aggressive
towards a viewpoint. Heck, even if I did contribute, my name would then be
tied to this account and I seriously don't trust what some of you would do
with that information. Sorry.
So to the team... please develop a schedule on when the next release comes
out and at least try to get Unity on 6.0 for some of us users. We need to
have some confidence in this project actually following through if they want
our money. Please don't turn this project into a glorified panhandler.
