Really tempted to put Trisquel 12 on my Thinkpad.

#Trisquel #Thinkpad #GNULInux

@terminaltilt it never worked on my old hardware and I stayed out of Linux for a long time after that.

Would be curious how it goes but I'm staying away.

@adubya

Yep, I managed to get into the live install but it doesn't see my WiFi. It makes sense, I upgrade my T14 Gen 1's WiFi to an AX210 for WiFi 6E, which definitely requires proprietary drivers

So, I am going to pass on the project for now. I love what they do, though.

@terminaltilt

I think the linux-libre kernel is a neckbeard too far, if you'll forgive the minced analogies, but go for it! ;)

@rl_dane

It's a nice thought but my WiFi card is just too new.

@terminaltilt @rl_dane
The FSF could've implemented a friendly "no blobs please"-button on every installation GUI, but instead chose to write a list of obscure distros that don't package proprietary drivers (even if your hardware may need them).

I like to view the linux-libre approach as a maintainability/longevity thing, rather than a matter of security or ideological purity.

Would be more interesting if there was a distro that defaulted to only shipping software written in interpreted languages :D

@moses_izumi @terminaltilt

I mean, taken to its logical extreme, it means you'd have an OS consisting of a compiled microkernel which did nothing but load a simple interpreter, which then loaded some kind of more complex interpreter or VM, in which everything was written.

Actually, the HP48 series calculators were basically that. Very little of its OS was compiled, everything else was either interpreted/tokenized "System RPL" or "User RPL."

IIRC, the only difference between the two was a little bit of performance in exchange for removing some guardrails.

@rl_dane @terminaltilt
I used to fiddle with ZDoom mods and got disappointed when a project relied on ACS (compiled language invented for Hexen) instead of Decorate/ZScript (script language that implements all of Doom's game logic, along with a bunch of handy additions).

I don't know how easy it is to disassemble ACS bytecode, but I still didn't like the idea of hopping between languages.

@moses_izumi @terminaltilt

I guess the big question is if decompilation of ACS binaries would be a 1:1 process, like some basic bytecodes that can go backwards and forwards pretty effortlessly.

@terminaltilt

Not surprising. That soft-fork of the linux kernel yeets not only firmware but binary blobs of any kind, including basic data like initialization vectors and whatnot. It's a hard-nosed ideological stance, which I tend to be in favor of (if for no reason other than a contrast to the standard attitude of the tech community, which comes across as some sort of craven self-pimping), but it honestly goes beyond all bounds of reason. :/