I'd like a debian based system like Ubuntu, Trisquel or Debian itself (I
cannot boot Debian otherwise I would use Debian since they do a better job
separating free from non-free) but I couldn't get it to boot UEFI, and this
PC has not "legacy" bios mode, it's EFI or nothing.
When I update the Linux-Libre kernel using the repo posted here:
http://trisquel.info/en/wiki/update-linux-libre-kernel then I can boot into a
desktop environment, however there is absolutely no desktop acceleration even
though there should be.
I read you should delete the xorg.conf file after updating the kernel to get
ValleyView graphics to work accelerated, yet after doing that I still get
software rendering, flashing cursor, etc, in other words there is no
difference. If I run X -configure then I just get an error "Number of created
screens does not match the number of detected devices". It's no secret I have
no idea how to configure Xorg nor how to overcome this issue, Googling it
doesn't help either, I have never messed with Xorg configs before, and in
Ubuntu 14.04 it works out of the box.
Someone else suggests adding the kernel parameter i915.modeset=1, but again,
I did this and ran sudo update-grub, yet still there is no 3D acceleration.
The whole thing is frustrating me as I really wish there was a free software
Operating System that would work with this hardware out of the box as none of
it requires non-free blobs, yet I still have to resort to a non-free OS to
get the computer to work as all the free OSes I've used are too outdated. I
imagine when Trisquel 7 is released it will work, but that doesn't help in
the mean time.
It is too bad the FSF doesn't put more funding into actually developing an
official free OS distribution to use rather than just lobbying. I find they
lost focus on building a free OS itself and have resorted to the community to
build it, they just maintain their parts of GNU, and there is just not enough
funding available for one particular OS as the whole community is too
fragmented, even though the software exists now. I'm not saying lobbying is
bad, but I would feel much happier to donate to the FSF if it actually looked
like they were working on an OS distro like Trisquel or even an official GNU
distro and keeping up with the new hardware that comes out. Intel appears to
gladly liberate and release their firmware and drivers, it's just not used
other than by the non-free OSes.
I never heard of gdnewhat, is it based on Redhat or something or is it it's
own type of OS? I would download, but my bandwidth here at home is terrible,
I downloaded a bunch of OSes (Ubuntu, Debian, Trisquel, etc) at a neighbours
as they have a decent connection. To have to download another OS just to find
out it doesn't work is annoying as I either have to go to my neighbours or
wait a day or two here at home due to my crappy internet connection.
