hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr1030.txt

Episode: 1030
Title: HPR1030: Ruben Rodriquez talks about Trisquel Linux
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1030/hpr1030.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-17 17:42:07

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So
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you.
First, I want to personally thank the organization for this festival for inviting me.
I'm very honoured to be here today.
And also, I have to thank Jason, where is Jason?
I think it's...
Oh, Jason who paid for my trip to here, so I can be talking to you.
And what I have for today is a presentation on the upcoming version of the Triscoll Gnullinox
System, which is a distribution that I probably understand nobody who knows about, who
have heard about, well, some of you, okay.
As you might know, there are a lot of Gnullinox distributions, like 500 listed in places
like DistroWatch, they have many, many distributions for every possible usage you may want.
So why another one, why what makes Triscoll interesting?
Well, you know, I'm sure about Distro's like Ubuntu or like Debian, like Fedora,
Open, Suce, and so on.
But if you think they are free software distributions, you are slightly wrong because they are mostly
free.
They include all of them, non-free pieces of software.
They include non-free drivers and non-free programs.
But there are a few distributions that don't.
One of them is Triscoll, the other ones are Distro's like Newsens, who knew about Distro
Newsens, one, two, very little amount of people, and other Distro's that are free are things
like music, or Ubuntu that are even less known to the public.
Why is this?
I am so little Distro's that are free, fully free, because there are a handicap with having
a fully free system.
You can have drivers for things like Nvidia cards or Intel wireless, or you can have freedom,
fully free, a fully free system.
Not every major distributor, I like Debian, or Ubuntu and so on, just to compromise this
purity, let's say, and they included any possible firmware file or non-free driver that could
in their view improve usability.
It might be true that it improves usability, but it comes with a big problem, which is
hardware vendors know that big distributors don't care that much about freedom.
So if they don't publish specifications or they don't publish firmware files, and they
just publish binary format firmware files, distributors will still include support for them, instead
of saying what they would, if they really cared, would need to say, which is, we are not
distributing this crap, because it is not free software, and we are free software distributors.
So someone has to take the plan and say, we are not going to do this, and we want mainly
the main reason for this project is to raise awareness on big, so-called free software
projects that are not doing things really well.
One of them is Ubuntu, which is, I think, a distro, which right now is like one half
of the GNU Linux desktop users are having installed, so it is a big problem, because it's
a common knowledge of people is that Linux works for every machine, and it is not true.
It needs extra, non-free components.
One of the things we want to do is raise awareness on this project, on this problem for the
Ubuntu project, and other things that need to be raised, the discussion is with accessibility,
which is why I've been invited to be here today, because Jonathan helped me to understand
the problem with all the versions of Trisco that weren't really accessible, and it was
because we weren't paying attention to that being a problem, and it happens in several sections
of what the distro is that you have to think of all the possible users, not just the big
standard user, but also of the minorities, and also without keeping track of the freedom
you're offering.
So since the previous version, we started to work on accessibility, which for the previous
version was an easy task to do, luckily, because after Jonathan point me out some ideas about
how to improve the accessibility, it was very easy.
We just were missing two or three programs and libraries, and we changed it a bit the
settings, and it was all good.
So the problem was that we as developers for the system weren't paying much attention
to this problem, but we embraced the accessibility problem since then, and we have been working
to improve this, but the second, the other interesting thing I want to tell everyone
about today is for this version, we had a lot of technical trouble, I'm going to show
you a bit of the system running this version, we have here, which is talking already,
is based on the latest Ubuntu Edition, which is on Eric, and with this version, a lot
of the system components were greatly upgraded, like GNOME went from the two .x brands to
the three .x brands, which is a huge change, and this time for this version, maintaining
accessibility in a good level was a much bigger effort than before, because all the things
that you cannot see when you use the system, but are beneath the libraries and the core
of the operating system, most of them are new, and most of them, like it's something happens
with free software, when we want to make something new, we wipe the underneath our own
fit, and we no longer have a place to stand, we don't, we want to do things so radically
that we end up having a half-ass product for a time, and then we catch up.
This is what is happening with GNOME right now, with one thing I want to raise awareness
with the GNOME project right now, I think they are finally coming along with this, is that
GNOME right now is not paying the enough attention to freedom.
This is GNOME 3, it doesn't look like any other GNOME 3 distribution you might find today,
this looks pretty much like our previous release, which was based on GNOME 2, why we didn't
use all the new stuff GNOME have swing hacking on, that doesn't work unless you have a 3D
accelerated graphic card, and to have that you need, in most cases today, no free drivers,
so if you have an Intel card, it will work, but if you have an Nvidia card, you will need
to use either free drivers that are very experimental and will most likely crash, or you will need
to use the GNOME 3 Nvidia driver.
If you have an AMD card or a Radeon card, you have no choice, all drivers are not free,
they say the Radeon driver is free, but it is not, because it needs a GNOME 3 firmware
blob to work, so what's the problem with GNOME right now, they didn't think of the users who
may choose not to install those drivers, and for those you will have what they called a fallback,
which if you think of it, it's like a second-rate desktop experience, if you have a 3D
accelerated card, then you have the new code with a new aspect and a new usability, if you choose
not to install these GNOME 3 drivers, then you go to a fallback, with no matter how good it is,
this is still a fallback especially tailored for people who are not using free drivers,
so what we did is like we did with the previous release, we are not including the new GNOME interface,
we are only including the fallback, but we tune it so it will work as well as it did in the previous
release, so it looks pretty much the same as our previous 3D release, and it has I think as
much accessibility as it had, but it took a lot of extra work, because of all of these changes,
and all of these problems that GNOME and Ubuntu were paying attention to, which is mainly freedom,
so since not many of you have ever seen or tried Trisco, I can show you around a bit,
but as it is customary with showing a product live in a conference, it will curse,
and it is a bit embarrassing, so double curse, it's not connected to the
but it's a stocking, because I don't know if you can hear it, but that's there for screen reader,
oh by the way, in use, if you're paying attention, wait, setup,
when it was broken, after finishing the release, it's so the setup logo on the release process,
and on the final step, the system will automatically load this page, which includes some
videos and some stuff about the original work, because this edition, this particular edition,
which is for the show, is the one, it is indeed a good point, with the membership card,
it's a USB card, I have one, it's like that one in the drum, if you are a set member,
you will have one of these cards already, I encourage you to join us on my work,
and they will very kindly send you one just below the USB card,
I have also, of course, no worries, two things here, we can't remember both the three skulls,
let's have some competition here, I have two, they have one already,
it's a very, very tight project, we have started, we have decided to have membership,
and to also, if users, this is not shiny, much better looking USB card,
that I'm having here for a certain day, if you want more, but let's go back to show
when you have a little bit of what the three skull looks like, we wanted to make, it's a very
easy to use system, so in a way, one criticism we have, sometimes is that unless other
distros, which are made on the own, they're more radical with the placing of the menus and
the sign, we are more classical, we wanted to make it easy for mainly Windows users to come to
three skulls, it's the Windows 95 paradigm, I think, one simple bar of the bottom,
pretty standard interface, and we have a place of three software included, and let's start by
talking about why our browser has this file name, which is a browser name, it doesn't really
have a name, it is in fact five, you can tell that it is Firefox with some minor changes,
but it is still pretty much the standard stuff, why did we change the name? Well,
there's a reason for it, and it's a freedom problem with Firefox, once again the core ideas of
the project is to make awareness of people like the Moffila Foundation, which are really not
that committed in the end to freedom in some small details that they need to change, and one of them
is that Firefox, if you don't know how to talk with Firefox in it, that is not really free software,
because one of the freedoms you don't have, you cannot distribute it for a fee, you cannot charge
another person to have a copy of it, or if you include it in a bigger distribution like
Trisco itself, if I did that, I could not sell this USB thingies, because I will be not
following the trademark regulations from the Moffila Foundation, they don't allow
you to charge for a modified or a modified product called Firefox, and if you modify it,
you have to change the name, so what we did is we get rid of all the naming, and we call it
like Ubuntu called it in its moment, it's kept as a browser, and this loophole, this way of making
a project not really free for commercial purposes, happens in other projects, it happens with Ubuntu
itself, you cannot sell Ubuntu CDs, or Ubuntu loaded USB keys, or anything like that, unless you
get rid of all the branding from canonical, because it is under a trademark agreement,
with despite all the licensing being free software, like using GPL everywhere, it's not enough,
because they are using a trademark legal restriction anyway, that don't allow you to distribute it
in any possible way you will want, so you have one of your freedoms cut off.
Those are the things that we do with Trisco everyday, finding these loops, these problems,
that I know they are not being enforced, you can buy online CDs from Ubuntu, you can buy
CD bundles with Firefox from them, but still it needs to be talked about, it needs to be fixed,
so we are doing these changes, and I'm going, or all over the world, as it happens,
like today, to make sure the people involved in these projects, which are
big and very interesting and very useful projects, but they need to pay attention to these
details, with the freedom of their final users. More things I can show you,
with other, one of the problems, and this type of app is that if you want to install albums,
it will show you a list of albums from the Amofilad Foundation page, and they leave free and
non-free installs in there, so we cannot do that, we cannot, one of our problems,
that one of the problems we distribute cannot recommend our users to install non-free software,
so we have our own extension list that it is not uploading because this is online.
Ah, no, it is not working because I don't have an internet connection, but if we have had,
it will be shown at least of extensions or albums that are selected to be, are
checked to be completely free. This problem, we also have, in the past, we've opened up this,
open up is used to have a listing, and they use the app probably, a listing of albums that
some of them, most of them are free, some of them are not, so we need to modify our version of
open up is to make it stop from recommending non-free software. One problem we have with that
is that if we wanted to modify open up is, again, we will need to change the branding because
modified versions of the program cannot be used, they are obviously a trademark.
So we, at that moment, had a bit of a hack, we didn't modify the packages,
including a mandatory configuration override. Luckily, we don't have to do any of that
things anymore because liberal office with this, the office did include it today.
This project, which has started as a fork from open up is much freedom-friendly, and they have
at least of the health policy for their list of albums, which is much better than they only
think you would reach out to. So, let's look less work in there, and well, most of the rest of
this office is pretty standard, and now it's when I want to start making you participate because
it's more interesting this way. So, how many of you know how many of you thought that
Pujundo, perhaps an example, was like a breakthrough for a new one, a new one.
Are you a work of any other distribution that is fully free? Did you know any other?
Yeah, but is there a name for Prado? Yeah, that's a very good project in here.
Prado is a project which is very nice, it's mostly hacker oriented.
I do recommend one of them. What's it? I don't always say it's very nice, but for hacker,
that is same formation, which is learning how to stop in the three-world environment, very nice
because it's not a bit broader. So, you have to policy yourself, you have to be a thing
it's much fun that way, but they are also working to make the acting of people and understand
that they are not doing it. If there's support, there must be a reason for that thing with this
browser or the concept, the new version of Firefox, which is called
ISCA, it's mostly the same thing, but they also have some extensions to improve the privacy of the user.
We do one thing in the program too, which is a browser. We reject cookies from PIPRP
pages, while they are browsing. That's a setting that I don't know, but I don't know why,
but my feelings, even if that's owned by the folks, so in Firefox, you are living traces of
work, and you are giving information to a different department, websites, every time there's
squab counter, or this block one buttons, or all that stuff, you are living traces of work,
and we want to, we are trying to make the modular people understand that they are not doing
very well in terms of privacy. They are not doing very well in terms of support
freedom with the offering non-free support in their pages, and they are not doing well with
trademark license, which takes me to another idea, which is the license that you can choose
in the VL or any other free support license. It's not the only thing about making a program
free. There are other details, like if you have on top of another non-support related,
but still have license, a piece of legal code, you can actually make a program not free,
and there are even free license illegal programs, like one thing you cannot do with a free operating
system is what's more difficult. You cannot watch identity, it's illegal that you do. If you go
and buy the identity, and you own this piece of plastic, and you play using nothing but free
support, you are committing a crime. And this is another thing that needs to be better known,
by the public, because it's not only illegal, but we have to make sure people know it, because
many distors, like in which means we'll make it work. You will never notice that you are doing
something illegal. So they are including a program, I will explain, and why is it illegal,
even if you want this city. The city is the building, sorry, it's has an encryption, the
protection they call it, that doesn't allow you to copy the contents, but if you have a problem,
it's able to break the DVD, it has to break the code to the show. Otherwise you need a program
which includes the key, the key, with a license from the people who sell the DVD.
So if you want to make a free program which plays a decision, you need to license it
under the restrictions from the DVD people, but that will mean you cannot choose to go into
distributed under the DBL. So if you want to make it DBL, you need to make it a crime code
in the in the city. And that is illegal, if you are not intending to copy, you want to play
for yourself, for your private owner of the product, it is still not okay, because what the
law says is you cannot break the code, no matter what, if you are doing it for a law from purpose,
we don't care, it's still illegal. So there's no way you can play a DVD with free software.
What you need to do is, we use to include the library, and just a world play for you, the DVD.
But again, that wouldn't make the people understand there's a problem.
It happens the same as with the Fedora, the Moffila licensing problem, it is not being enforced.
We are, you are not liable, you are technically liable, but nobody will
sue you for playing a DVD for yourself that you pay, no matter what software you use for.
But still, if we include the library, like the management is doing today,
nobody will know that it is a problem, and with DVDs it was a big problem, but with
Blu-ray discs, it's much worse. With Blu-ray, the DRN is so packed up that not only it is illegal,
but it's really packing hard to make it work. So we could also include a driver,
a codec to break into Blu-ray encryption, because like with DVD encryption,
it's very bleak, it's not protecting anything, it's a legal hack. It is there,
like if you have a wall for your properties, and it's big, you can jump, but that's not the
protection, the protection is in the law. It's the fact that you jump over, which is
protecting your property, not the law. With the DVDs and with Blu-ray, it is not the encryption.
The encryption was broken years ago, that was not a problem, the problem was with the law.
And that is the final step of all of this. We need to take free software, one step further,
fight with it for our rights, because we are always talking about our freedoms,
why do we say our freedoms and not our rights, because we don't have to the right to
treat the code of a free problem. We may have the freedom to read the code with a free problem,
there's not a law that says we the people have the right to read any code to any programs that
you can allow. But there should be a law, because these four freedoms that call this stuff
is based on these four freedoms, which I'm sure the guys that are closing the event
will come to you for a minute. These four freedoms are just that, freedoms that we are
constructing for ourselves, but they are not protected by any law. They are in fact being attacked
by my laws, that we need to get rid of them. And I am referring to time from Spain, but
our globalized world works, works in a way that your laws, a technique, some of my laws of
the future, because they are trading agreements between the U.S. and the U.S.
like, if you see we go in here, that you play the meaning, because you have of this the law to the
PMTA, but it's supposed to not perfect me, because I'm European, but we have the European
and the right direction, something like that, which implements the same stupid idea for Europeans.
So we need to make these four freedoms, four laws, four rights for everyone. We need to get rid
of the final steps, the next step is to make us laws protect our rights, the final step is to
get rid of, that's the final goal, hopefully it was a start of pretty much when I was born.
I think when I think I think one was the new project born, 81, 83. Oh, I was one year old,
so I was not much involved in that part of the process, but I'm helping to carry the parts
right now, but we are not that many people working in the rights and freedom parts of
pre-suffer, most people with works called in, which is great, it's amazing work, a lot of people
is doing around the world, so we can have pre-suffer, we can have pre-pronged, but we need better
we need to raise awareness on things like trademark licensing, patents are something we need to
get rid, very fast, I hope, I really hope the patent system will die soon, because it's another
thing, what in the case of trademark, I might say, our policy is we don't care if there's a patent
for something, we could get rid of that problem, let's say we cannot do this because even if we
have pre-suffer program for it, like pre-suffer for for it playing on MP3 sound file, if we
get rid of everything that is patentable, we will end up with like sitting because
double clicking is patentable, everything is patentable, so you cannot get rid of everything and
my position, my personal position and this is, if we could, if it was technically possible to get
rid of it, we will be helping patentable person, we will be open about the law, because our law is
about to prevail, so the final step is to raise awareness for all of you, for all the public,
so if you join and even if you cannot call, you can protest and you can vote and you can change
things, you can, in the case of, I don't know very much about American politics, but now I know
you can write pure representatives, and you can ask for better laws to be written, and there are
many things to be get rid of, and why do I try specifically to change the laws of a country,
and not with anything, because sadly your laws affect your rights of the world in a very,
very important way, so you are the one to make the change in person, so I don't know how much time
did I use, but I would like to have some questions for the rest of the time, yeah.
If you have a idea of transport, yeah, we have several relations, this is the standard
condition, this is the standard form of the people, but we are communities, very important,
and by very curious people, who want to change things, who want the greatest everything,
and they are just asking, I want a version with my favorite desktop, with my favorite
program, and all of that, we cannot make every possible combination, but we have this knowledge
condition, we are in the making, in the company, we are talking to you, maybe, 10 person,
this is not the case yet, but we are working on it, we have what we call traditional mean,
which is based on LSD, and it is intended for netbooks and a very powerful computers and
for all computers, because that's another of the great things about Prisha, where is that,
we are concerned about making it to life, and not following to this,
this thing of making new programs, so much more consuming, so you will need to buy a new hardware,
because not free software vendors, and hardware vendors are very connected, and they
wanted this game to be on constantly, but we don't care, because we are not selling anything,
so if we can make your 1998 computer work, we will make sure it will still work today,
and you can work, and you can make it work with 10 to 15 years old computers, which is something
that we use it with from Pentium 2 onwards, which is, you laugh, but this is laughable here,
but I've been in Peru, and I have the connection with some American users that write me,
they have really big problems, because they don't have access to new computers, and they need
something, and they don't allow the latest destroyer, like it's going to work, or whatever,
it will not work, it's no way to install that, so that's another thing that, like with accessibility,
and I cannot have time in this guy, and of course, open my eyes to the accessibility problem,
at that time, I was also an aware of that problem, that in some countries, they need
simpler software to bless the computers, because they can background big things like
liberal games, they need something as modern, because they don't think they can use.
That's why we have this person, and we are working in another one, which is for educational purposes,
which is including the software desktop, anyone of you know about the software environment,
and a little bit of you, the software environment is the software running on all PC computers,
you may know about your application, you know, these are the, I think they are known as the 100-dollar
computers, they are the 100-dollar laptops, these are the toys for kids, for development countries,
this is a software, I wish that I have them, I'm going to try it out, but it is designed for
kids up to 12, and it is being used already, not our physical version, but, yeah, we have over there.
Would you like?
No, it's not a one-legged hub, I don't know, but, in fact, it's a one-legged hub,
what the project is pushing small chip computers, so you have to give it right now,
because the model we see is this idea, it goes step-down on the way,
so it didn't get to be as big as it could happen, but there are all the speeds being deployed
in 25 countries, now it takes, and they have like 3 million to 1.5 million computers running on
and we are taking this sugar learning environment in a three-scale pace,
so even if you don't have these solar physical computers, you can install it in your school or
to your kids, and they can have this experience without those computers, which are, by the way,
not for sale, so, for questions?
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