Some interesting things I learned from the Trisquel forum, or from upgrading from Trisquel 7 to Trisquel 8.
Some nifty tricks if you want to install KDE on Trisquel 8.
sudo apt install plasma-desktop
sudo apt install triskel
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/why-mate
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/why-mate-instead-kde
Beware that Trisquel 8 is bigger than Trisquel 7… but there are some things you can do about that.
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/why-trisquel-8-so-much-bigger-trisquel-7
For example, if you do a dist-upgrade, there will be old GNOME
packages left behind from Trisquel 7. You can purge those packages as
follows:
sudo apt purge gnome-system-monitor gnome-screenshot baobab \
file-roller gnome-search-tool gnome-calculator gcalctool gedit \
gedit-common gnome-dictionary gthumb gthumb-data
sudo apt purge libgtkmm-3.0-1v5 libgtksourceview-3.0-1 \
libgtksourceview-3.0-common gir1.2-gtksource-3.0 libgdict-1.0-9 \
libgdict-common
Realtek Ethernet controllers? They tend to load non-free firmware. So, if you were wondering about that one Windows PC I have at home (okay, maybe you weren’t) that started having trouble coming out of standby for its Ethernet card, this could be it. Windows driver updates decided to load new firmware for it that has some bug in it. Luckily, the card has its own built-in default firmware that appears not to have this bug problem, conveniently avoided if you use Trisquel.
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/dmesg-output-missing-free-firmware-non-free-firmware-loading-disable
Want to setup an image you can write directly to disk? Install
the oem-config package for this.
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/trisquel-pre-install-img-versions
Interesting article here advocating for the avoidance of “passive consumerism” in the libre software community. WARNING: inappropriate language in linked article.
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/carl-chenet-warns-free-software-slowly-dying
20180918/https://carlchenet.com/foss-passive-consumerism-kills-our-community/
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/dont-kill-our-community
Example of bad forum conduct. Also, there is an important note from
jxself on how to contribute to Trisquel distribution development.
20180918/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/trisquel-needs-be-rebooted-and-based-ubuntu-1804
Failed search.
Worthy of mention is that Wikipedia does not have an article on passive consumerism.
Now this links to an interesting article on using a Raspberry Pi as a flash chip programmer, with SOIC clip to connect directly to the pins on the motherboard. Yes, for flashing Libreboot onto your laptop’s BIOS firmware.
20180919/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/libreboot-installation-winsond-chip
20180919/https://libreboot.org/docs/install/rpi_setup.html
Want to do drawing on modern computers in 2018? The all-out recommendation seems to be to use a tablet computer if you want to do drawing with a stylus, not a tablet input device without a display.
20180919/https://trisquel.info/en/forum/should-i-get-ipad-instead-xp-pen-drawing-tablet
The most important place to look for information on Trisquel? The documentation.
20180919/https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/documentation
I must say, though, this is an important but frequently overlooked resource. Trisquel seems to have quite nice documentation in quality, though the quantity of course doesn’t compare with that of Ubuntu. This is also the go-to for information on development of Trisquel.