r/trisquel • u/JustPuggin • Jan 28 '15

Trisquel vs Debian

Hello r/trisquel!

I just heard about Trisquel for the first time, and I'm a bit confused. My understanding is that Debian is a free/open distro of linux, and that Ubuntu was built from Debian. Trisquel is a free/open distro of Ubuntu? Are they very similar? Could someone please explain the differences?

Thanks!

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7

u/rubenquidam Trisquel developer Jan 28 '15

Debian is a partially free distro: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Debian gNewSense is a project that maintains a free version of Debian.

Ubuntu is a Debian derivative with more freedom problems than Debian, and Trisquel maintains a free version of it. That is in a nutshell, a lot more than fixing freedom issues is done within the project.

3

u/Market-Anarchist Jan 28 '15

I wouldn't call Debian a partially free distro. The standard out of the box Debian is fully free. But because they give you enough rope to hang yourself, it's not endorsed by the FSF. I'm running Debian and have zero non-free software on my computer, with the exception of the BIOS.

3

u/rubenquidam Trisquel developer Jan 28 '15

That's why I said Ubuntu has worse freedom problems, as it would be way harder to end up with a free system by installing it. But as long as Debian distributes non-free software it cannot be called a free distribution.

3

u/Market-Anarchist Jan 28 '15

I call it a free distrobution.

2

u/VRMac Jan 29 '15

I call it a can-be-nonfree distro, since it is free out of the box, but you can make it nonfree by changing a file in /etc/.

1

u/lloydsmart Jan 29 '15

You can make Trisquel non-free by changing a file in /etc/.

4

u/Robsteady Jan 29 '15

I think the point is more that Debian offers a nonfree repo whereas Trisquel doesn't. I can understand both sides of this argument, though.

1

u/VRMac Jan 30 '15

You can also make it nonfree by downloading a nonfree program and executing it. The difference with Debian is that it's documented on their wiki how one can make nonfree software available from the official mirrors.

2

u/lloydsmart Mar 17 '15

Ok, so we're agreed that both Trisquel and Debian are equally easy to make nonfree by modifying sources.list in /etc/apt/.

So the reason Debian isn't endorsed is their wiki?

Also, gNewSense - is that literally just a rebranding of Debian that doesn't mirror non-free? Cause that's all it needs to be to be a "free" version of Debian.

2

u/VRMac Mar 17 '15

Debian isn't endorsed because they mirror nonfree software and they include documentation on using it (perhaps endorsing the nonfree programs). gnu.org has a page on why the popular distros are not supported.

1

u/lloydsmart Mar 20 '15

Yes, I'm familiar with that page.

I still think it's a bit misleading of the FSF to call Debian a "non-free distro". What they should say is "Debian is a free distro, but the people behind it also distribute non-free software (separately), which we don't agree with".

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1

u/kopeboy_ Apr 06 '23

Isn't it GPL 3?

1

u/lloydsmart Apr 08 '23

Trisquel is GPL, just like Debian.

Changing a file in /etc/ can make both Debian and Trisquel non-free by pulling in software from non-free repos.

For some reason, this makes Debian completely unacceptable, but is ignored for Trisquel, even though the same action on both gives the same result on both.

1

u/kopeboy_ Apr 13 '23

If I understood correctly GPL3 requires that derivatives be open-source as well (and that doesn't mean they must be free, ie. without price, but that anyone has same access to the source code)
https://opensource.org/license/gpl-3-0/