Just found this reply to my note on their list about jumping from Ubuntu to Trisquel. They're actually ideologically even more purist than Debian is, it seems -- there's a non-free Debian repository nowadays, isn't there? Anyway:
First of all: welcome!
there are certain "non-free" packages i need, particularly video drivers.
The Trisquel community will not "help" you install non-free software, because it does not consider it would actually be helping you: https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trisquel-community-guidelines
by pointing at the trisquel servers in my /etc/apt/sources.list instead of ubuntu ones, i can switch by simply doing the usual apt update / apt upgrade
Non-free packages would remain and would never be upgraded, even if vulnerabilities in them are exploited.
If I were you, I would export the list of installed packages following https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/cloning-system-or-how-make-copy-installed-pack... (for instance), make a fresh install of Trisquel 11 Beta 6 (based on Ubuntu 22.04) using the ISO on https://cdbuilds.trisquel.org/aramo/ providing your desktop environment of preference (tell us which one it is if you do not know what ISO to download) and import the packages. Those that are not installable are certainly proprietary software.
are the package names the same?
Yes.
is there a non-free repository for things like vid drivers?
No. Trisquel is 100% free software.
i presume my other sources.list lines, that have to do with ppas and the like, could remain intact.
You can save those files before the fresh install too. For your own sake, I hope you will not re-add PPA proposing proprietary software.
what version name (focal, jammy, for instance, should i employ
The code name of Trisquel 10 (based on Ubuntu 20.04) is Nabia. That of Trisquel 11 (based on Ubuntu 22.04) is Aramo.
is there a model sources.list I could copy from?
Because I download the packages from https://mirror.math.princeton.edu/pub/trisquel-packages/ (there are many other mirrors) and I use Trisquel 11 Aramo, my /etc/apt/sources.list is: # Trisquel repositories for supported software and updates deb https://mirror.math.princeton.edu/pub/trisquel-packages/ aramo main deb https://mirror.math.princeton.edu/pub/trisquel-packages/ aramo-security main deb https://mirror.math.princeton.edu/pub/trisquel-packages/ aramo-updates main deb https://mirror.math.princeton.edu/pub/trisquel-packages/ aramo-backports main
[eoq]
So they seem to be the computer equivalent of woke, which seems to me to be that they'd rather I follow the RMS model than have a computer that does what I need it to do. There are no Nvidia drivers from the FSF that do what the Nvidia binary blobs and associated configuration software do.
The on-topic question: there are TDE packages that would work, correct? Are there even any for "aramo"? -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
dep via tde-users wrote:
there are certain "non-free" packages i need, particularly video drivers.
The Trisquel community will not "help" you install non-free software, because it does not consider it would actually be helping you: https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trisquel-community-guidelines
Firstly it is amazing how internet is connecting same minded people. I, personally, do not accept someone deciding for and not giving me a choice. Secondly studying social behavior, scientists come to the conclusion that the swarm intelligence builds up with time and exceeds the individual intelligence, doesn't matter how intelligent one might be. So, if most people find Debian useful, I think you should listen to that.
For me most important is the stability and security and Debian is excellent providing it - TDE on top and again - stability. This makes the combination excellent for me.
BR
said deloptes via tde-users:
| Firstly it is amazing how internet is connecting same minded people. I, | personally, do not accept someone deciding for and not giving me a | choice. Secondly studying social behavior, scientists come to the | conclusion that the swarm intelligence builds up with time and exceeds | the individual intelligence, doesn't matter how intelligent one might | be. So, if most people find Debian useful, I think you should listen to | that.
The reason I didn't use Debian when I switched from ) OS/2 to Linux 25 years and two months ago was that Debian was a pain in the ass to install and configure. Additionally, it was abundantly political. In those days, computing was like the early days of automobiles -- you were going to spend a certain amount of time with the thing up on the rack, but it was in service of driving the damn thing. Debian was at the time more for those who liked to work on their computers than for those who drove 'em.
This was still the case some years later when after enduring RPM-based distros -- Caldera (yes!), Red Hat (4.2, then the ghastly 5.0), and SuSE (who knows) -- but now Ubuntu offered a DEB-based distro that was also relatively easy to install and configure. I wish I'd swallowed hard and switched to Debian then, taken my lumps then instead of now. But then as now, my computers are tools, the means to my ends. And then (less so now, I think), Debian was a kind of walled garden, as this Ubuntu spinoff is apparently. (Of course, we were all using KDE or Gnome as we waited for Rasterman to finish Enlightenment, the pinnacle of desktop achievement or so we were led to believe and just about impossible to configure.) Debian also went to some efforts to prevent "non-free" code from running. (They even banned KDE because of the Qt nonpurity.)
If there were an *easy* way to jump to Debian I'd do it this afternoon. All I'd need is a way to generate a list of the things have installed, then tell Debian to install those. That's where the Trisquel thing kind of shines. I think I could jump to it pretty easily, but it wants to bring a lot of crap along, including vid drivers that just don't work as well as the OEM ones do. We have heard a lot about "free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-beer," but nothing about free as in using one's computer as he pleases. So we have Ubuntu and the People's Revolutionary Ubuntu Replacement. What we need is a good recipe to replace Ubuntu, which is fine but for Canonical's business plan, with Debian, which still breaks some stuff.
As to the hive mind -- that must be why Debian is by far the leading Linux distribution, right?
| For me most important is the stability and security and Debian is | excellent providing it - TDE on top and again - stability. This makes | the combination excellent for me.
I have no doubt. Getting there is the problem. Which is why I need to keep looking. -- dep
Pictures: http://www.ipernity.com/doc/depscribe/album Column: https://ofb.biz/author/dep/
On Sunday 12 March 2023 12:23:02 dep via tde-users wrote:
said deloptes via tde-users:
As to the hive mind -- that must be why Debian is by far the leading Linux distribution, right?
| For me most important is the stability and security and Debian is | excellent providing it - TDE on top and again - stability. This makes | the combination excellent for me.
I have no doubt. Getting there is the problem. Which is why I need to keep looking. -- dep
I have tried out a gazillion different distros over the years, and I am probably not done yet. There might still be another one just over the horizon, the Linux distro that will change my life for the better.
For the past almost-twenty years, I've run Linux, went through PC Linux (with the KDE3 desktop) to get to Kubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04, and after that never really wanted to change; but as you have said, Canonical changed, and the 'Buntus got ruined in the process. I was done with them already years and years ago, especially when I found out all their call-home stuff, and when it finally became obvious that I was not going to win this fight against the corporations by temporary fixes, or hacking this program or that, to try to get my computer to do what I want.
Trisquel is somewhat better, but I remember it being at least as much of a pain to get started as Debian; at that time, moreover, the networking was especially hard to configure.
Once I finally got into Debian, I never looked back, and never thought seriously about going over to another distro; except, I admit, that I have switched to Devuan, but only because Devuan is more Debian now than the original Debian. As you say, they tend to be rather political, but I don't really spend a lot of time hanging out with them.
If you really want to get a system that is stable, that pretty much stays the same over the years, across different systems, different machines, different devices ... then I think you want Debian or Devuan. There are others worth trying out, but it seems to me that Debian set the standard for the rest. Even if Debian may or may not have violated its own principles with systemd (I don't know, whatever ...), it is still the one that stands out. And if not, there is always Devuan, and there will probably always be some fork of it that will remain true to that ideal.
Now, I am a pretty non-technical person (compared to the rest of this mailing list, I mean). To me, if you can read and pretty much follow the discussions on this mailing list, then you should have no problems get Debian/Devuan, or some fork of these, properly installed on your machine. (I seem to recall that Leslie was giving Debian or Devuan a try, but then I didn't hear any more about it, so I hope he hasn't given up.)
In any case, there are people here who have been running Debian for 20+ years, so I believe that you will have more than enough help to guide you through the process.
As for the non-free and contrib repos, I myself don't use them, don't use anything except GNU/Linux free/libre software; not for some ideologically pure reason, but only because my system doesn't seem to need them, and runs just fine. But then, your needs may differ from mine.
Likewise, I don't use any of the guided partitioning or automated stuff. I use the expert mode, and configure everything one line at a time; but after I've reinstalled hundreds or thousands of times, I can do this in my sleep. And this way, I get what I want, rather than something that is not quite right.
All the 'buntus, Trisquel, etc., etc., are based on Debian. Apple itself is based on Unix, so even its architecture somewhat resembles Debian. And for all of these "Debian-based" distros, I have to ask, What did they improve by forking from Debian, and creating the 'buntus, etc.? What answer would you get? I believe, for most of them, that the only advantages go rather to the corporations behind them, maybe to the developers; certainly not to the users of those systems.
Take a poll, and I would guess that well over half the readers or contributors to this mailing list run either Debian or Devuan. It is probably a much higher portion than that. The reason is not because of "hive mind", but rather because the older one gets, one tends to dislike change. One especially dislikes being a slave to a machine.
If you don't want to be a slave to your machines, that is a good reason to learn to run Debian/Devuan. At least here, running my own machine, I can feel like I have some control over my life. Beyond that, not so much ...
Bill
William Morder via tde-users wrote:
If you don't want to be a slave to your machines, that is a good reason to learn to run Debian/Devuan. At least here, running my own machine, I can feel like I have some control over my life. Beyond that, not so much ...
I couldn't resist and had to say Amen!
Except that systemd topic - it runs very reliably now and when you read, watch or listen to the reasoning behind it, it makes a lot of sense. Especially since Linus Torvalds banned Kay Sievers, things are really easy (but I think it was back in 2014). So I think for dep the better option is Debian as he didn't mention anything about having problem with systemd in his writings. I have one server machine and one firewall that run Debian without systemd (sysv-init). You have the choice in Debian to do this if you wish. I think it is very useful on desktops and notebooks, while on servers, not so much. It makes life much easier and since it is working stable and quite, I don't mind.
Anno domini 2023 Sun, 12 Mar 23:05:45 +0100 deloptes via tde-users scripsit:
[...] I have one server machine and one firewall that run Debian without systemd (sysv-init). You have the choice in Debian to do this if you wish. I think it is very useful on desktops and notebooks, while on servers, not so much. It makes life much easier and since it is working stable and quite, I don't mind.
Sorry, but since when do es debian give you the freedom to remove systemd?
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Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Sorry, but since when do es debian give you the freedom to remove systemd?
Since always - because of this war that started back then. See here
https://wiki.debian.org/Debate/initsystem/sysvinit
so if you don't want to deal with systemd just install sysv-init and adjust the boot part (command line) as instructed:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet init=/lib/sysvinit/init ipv6.disable=1"
and the result is
Server # ps -A | more PID TTY TIME CMD 1 ? 00:01:59 init
in contrast to the desktop PID TTY TIME CMD 1 ? 00:00:52 systemd
it can not be easier than this - long live Debian and TDE :)
BR
On Sun March 12 2023 15:17:51 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
Sorry, but since when do es debian give you the freedom to remove systemd?
I have never used systemd - not because of any bugs but because the deliberately cathedral design takes over a large part of GNU/Linux infrastructure and makes future bazaar innovation more difficult.
I used Devuan for less than a year before switching back to Debian in 2019.
Upon switching back I did indeed need one hack. IIRC it was that the quagga maintainer had removed an init script to force migration to systemd. All I had to do was copy an init script from an earlier Debian release.
Today I have no hacks and Debian without systemd runs fine on servers, virtual machines, and laptops. (And I switched from quagga to frr which is newer and better supported.)
And it may be that I should thank the Devuan team for keeping Debian on its toes.
--Mike
On Sunday 12 March 2023 05:59:39 pm Mike Bird via tde-users wrote:
And it may be that I should thank the Devuan team for keeping Debian on its toes.
tsk, tsk,
MX Linux and antiX Linux both do the same thing (run without systemd) and both are vastly larger (Users: >20k vs. <1K, Devs: 20+ vs. 1?).
More importantly, to me, they both have an atmosphere of actively 'helping' the user rather than the Fan Boy filled, we won’t help you, figure it out yourself, and go the fuck away unless you spout our exact ideology cesspool community of Devuan. YMMV.
Best, Michael
On Sunday 12 March 2023 15:59:39 Mike Bird via tde-users wrote:
On Sun March 12 2023 15:17:51 Dr. Nikolaus Klepp via tde-users wrote:
I'll just give a group response to those last few replies. (I have been outdoors today, that place beyond the keyboard and command-line screen.)
Regarding the sysvinit versus systemd: I don't really have a knowledgeable opinion on this matter, as I am not a technical person. I have heard explanations and arguments on both sides, and they all sound sensible, but I don't know if some are clearly wrong and others right, or if there can be shades of right and wrong. As I said before, Debian gave me control over my machine, and freed me from the 'Buntus and other distros like them. But then I switched to Devuan, just to try it. Suddenly my machine ran better, and I was no longer fighting to make my machine do what I wanted. I like what Devuan says, but I don't know if it is better than Debian just because of that choice of sysvinit over systemd, or because their philosophy or politics makes them better developers, or other factors are involved. I only say, my machine runs better on Debian than it did on Kubuntu, and now it runs better on Devuan than it did on Debian.
I was respectful toward Debian, and never said never "no systemd, no nevermore"! I only say that, thus far, in my own experience, Devuan has performed better on my own machines, and I am able to use completely free/libre GNU/Linux software. I have also heard about memory leaks with Devuan and sysvinit. Don't know the story there; I can only say, my system runs really well on Devuan. Debian worked okay, I guess, except that I kept having problems that forced me to do a complete reinstallation every few days. (This was about five years ago now, so I cannot remember the details, sorry.) Since switching to Devuan, everything has been pretty stable and predictable. So long as the user does nothing too stupid, everything seems to work as I had hoped. There is always that human stupidity problem, but since I keep my machines at only one user, who is myself, I have managed to limit the stupid factor to a minimum.
For dep, and perhaps Leslie, if still out there wondering how to get your Debian/Devuan OS installed, then I say, that THIS is where you want to be. You may not know it yet, or you may have had a rough start getting into Debian, but once you get past those early steps, Debian (or Devuan) is stable, dependable, only requires basic maintenance. So whether you choose Debian with systemd (or not), or choose Devuan with only sysvinit, it doesn't matter much to me. But if you are looking for a 'Buntu type system, based on Debian, it strikes me as silly not to stick with Debian until you figure it out. It's a little harder than the 'Buntus, not so difficult as Slackware. If you are already running TDE on top of Ubuntu, then you will have very little problem making the transition to Debian.
And as I said, we have a great many Debian/Devuan users out there, so somehow or other you ought to be able to get it up and running.
My suggestion is (as someone else said), get yourself that flash drive or wherever you burn your image, then give Debian/Devuan a try. If you can get it installed (and people are here to help), then I believe that you'll be glad you went with that instead of some jazzed-up new distro that is all tricked out with lots of glitzy graphics and logos. Neither Debian nor Devuan are pretty; they just work, and they're stable, and you can keep things the same on your machine for decades, if you so choose.
Bill
dep via tde-users wrote:
The reason I didn't use Debian when I switched from ) OS/2 to Linux 25 years and two months ago was that Debian was a pain in the ass to install and configure. Additionally, it was abundantly political. In those days, computing was like the early days of automobiles -- you were going to spend a certain amount of time with the thing up on the rack, but it was in service of driving the damn thing. Debian was at the time more for those who liked to work on their computers than for those who drove 'em.
yes this is true. I tried my first linux 1999. I can remember those days. Even an update or upgrade was a point for the first few releases. But things changed over time (I'll write below).
This was still the case some years later when after enduring RPM-based distros -- Caldera (yes!), Red Hat (4.2, then the ghastly 5.0), and SuSE (who knows) -- but now Ubuntu offered a DEB-based distro that was also relatively easy to install and configure. I wish I'd swallowed hard and switched to Debian then, taken my lumps then instead of now. But then as now, my computers are tools, the means to my ends. And then (less so now, I think), Debian was a kind of walled garden, as this Ubuntu spinoff is apparently. (Of course, we were all using KDE or Gnome as we waited for Rasterman to finish Enlightenment, the pinnacle of desktop achievement or so we were led to believe and just about impossible to configure.) Debian also went to some efforts to prevent "non-free" code from running. (They even banned KDE because of the Qt nonpurity.)
Oh, come on ... Debian has pretty strict and clear policy. That's it. KDE became anyway useless for many other reasons. This is why people decided to keep KDE3 as TDE.
If there were an *easy* way to jump to Debian I'd do it this afternoon.
as mentioned as USB drive costs 10-15US$ or € and you can try it in less then an hour.
All I'd need is a way to generate a list of the things have installed,
when you have the usb plugged in with debian on, you can chroot and easily prepare it to suit you.
then tell Debian to install those. That's where the Trisquel thing kind of shines. I think I could jump to it pretty easily, but it wants to bring a lot of crap along, including vid drivers that just don't work as well as the OEM ones do. We have heard a lot about "free-as-in-freedom and free-as-in-beer," but nothing about free as in using one's computer as he pleases. So we have Ubuntu and the People's Revolutionary Ubuntu Replacement. What we need is a good recipe to replace Ubuntu, which is fine but for Canonical's business plan, with Debian, which still breaks some stuff.
Ubuntu uses Experimental and works as such. Debian stable did not cause any (I repeat any) issue in the past 10+ years. We put some effort to make TDE more stable and usable. I remember shortly after the project started, I had to look into encoding (things different than ASCII were not working fine). So I put some effort into solving my problems and the other people helping especially the developers and maintainer did a heroic work in the past, so that TDE is much better and more stable. I can only recommend. As someone mentioned you can just copy the ~/.trinity directory and have your custom settings. As for the applications on ubuntu as on debian use $ dpkg --get-selections
and then --set-selections
It could be you have some package name mismatch, but 99% should work
As to the hive mind -- that must be why Debian is by far the leading Linux distribution, right?
Well, I don't know. I think a lot of people use also CentOS. I think the sources are the same and developed over time, so all distros got more stable and usable. However Debian with its policy is preferable as it gives more freedom, more packages, homogene environment, easy to understand and more. I think it is personal choice at the end, but again based on studies (I'm sure you will find some) there are few major distros and the rest can hardly cope with them. I think the reason is the man power needed to run such a project. A lot of distroes disappeared, because they are not maintainable. I remember when I started looking into my char encoding problems (it was perhaps 2011), there were just 4 developers and maintainers incl. the project leaders (TDE). Now I looked some time ago and it was more then 30 people, some of them working very actively. I mean look for a distro that is being maintained and is responsive. For examply if they tell you, you don't need this or that - for me it is no go!
| For me most important is the stability and security and Debian is | excellent providing it - TDE on top and again - stability. This makes | the combination excellent for me.
I have no doubt. Getting there is the problem. Which is why I need to keep looking.
Ahm, don't understand - a usb pen drive - may be old one with 16GB or so and 2 hours time is sufficient. I for myself even stopped using usb for such exercises - I use virtual box. You can download and test everything without touching your system, or even without rebooting it. If it is not good apply the "rm -rf" cure and done.
BR
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deloptes -
dep -
Dr. Nikolaus Klepp -
Michael -
Mike Bird -
William Morder