[Trisquel-users] Its time to start questioning Trisquel's longevity

[tegskywalker]

As we all know, Trisquel is a side project for Ruben as he spends the  
majority of his time at his full time job. With Trisquel moving to an LTS  
model, it introduced stability to the project but at the same time, allows  
Ruben to sit on things for a while while he concentrates on his career.

For a long time, people have been asking for many things. Some want an  
updated ISO (7.01 or 7.1) so they can install it on their system with more up  
to date packages and the backported kernel and xorg packages enabled by  
default. As it stands right now, the current ISO is horribly updated and  
needs a refresh soon. Of course, we are all taking to a wall as Ruben has had  
no plans to release updates.

The desktop environment needs an overhaul. The current fallback isn't working  
for many people as many users here have opted for straight up Gnome Shell,  
XFCE, Unity, and MATE. Trisquel peaked visually in the 4.0 and 5.0 days with  
the Gnome 2 look and the current solution just isn't working. With Trisquel  
8, serious consideration needs to happen as the default. Some have moved  
towards the MATE route as the packages will be officially supported from the  
start. Either way, it seems like the common practice when installing Trisquel  
is to switch DEs from the start. That's something that Ruben should consider  
for the future use of the desktop.

I know we can do netinstall, but it would be nice to have easier ways (meta  
package or dedicated ISO) to do a server install like how Ubuntu does it. Its  
great that Trisquel is trying to fit a very very small niche on the desktop,  
but making it easier for libre operating systems as a dedicated server or  
cloud deployment option should be a focus. I would love that there were  
official Docker images for Trisquel or a service like Digital Ocean or  
Rackspace could easily spin Trisquel for their users.

So will Ruben change the path of Trisquel down the road? Who knows as he is a  
fricken ghost and that's not good for the project.