Re: [Trisquel-users] What free distro or one I can free with raspberry pi?

[dguthrie]

You can't run a libre kernel on the Raspberrg Pi because it requires lots of  
firmware. It won't boot without proprietary software: the nonfree bootloader  
has to load a GPU 'blob' which then initialises the rest of the system  
functions. The GPU blob is not just firmware: its functions are very similar  
to a real OS.
Your best bet is Pidora or Arch.Pidora seems to not be maintained (you should  
investigate further) but only includes the necessary nonfree stuff to boot  
and run the Pi, so this may be more desirable than Arch. You probably know  
the drill: it's an RPM based distribution, albeit a community one rather than  
officially supported by Fedora and Red Hat. Arch gets better support and can  
use packages from official Arch ARMv6hl packages (they actually support back  
to ARMv5!). Arch include nonfree programs in the repository but it is well  
optimised for the Pi's hardware, and almost all the distributions for the Pi  
have similar inclusions. Also try the Rasbian minimal image, and install and  
run vrms to ditch some firmware for wireless adapters etc. Note that stuff  
not in Debian nonfree repo (Pi specific proprietary software such as  
Minecraft and Matlab etc) won't be picked up by vrms. I also found Rasbian  
considerably more unreliable than Arch, due to the inclusion of things like  
Oracle Java and the Pi specific proprietary software which can sometimes  
conflict or misbehave for unknown reasons.
It's also possible to run Debian armel with custom kernel.
Try Pidora, but if you are going for another distribution then go for Arch  
over Rasbian.
SuSE also has a port, although is similar to Pidora.