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Free Culture

Trisquel

I finally decommissioned my last Mac (an old G4 that dual-booted Debian) and replaced it with a slightly newer PC running Trisquel GNU/Linux. Trisquel is a “free as in freedom” distro that takes all the proprietary junk out of the Linux kernel and doesn’t install non-free codecs or plugins for media players and web browsers.

You might think that Trisquel would be limited by privileging freedom over convenience, but no. It Just Worked. Trisquel found not just my audio and graphics cards but my printer and even my Wacom tablet without so much as a nudge. I’ve plugged in a bluetooth dongle and used a Wiimote with it. The only thing I couldn’t get working was the wireless network (I don’t have a wireless dongle with free firmware for it), but it’s a desktop system so I just plugged it into the hub.

If you are looking for a GNU/Linux distro, I recommend Trisquel. I asked my youngest child, and they thought it was better than Mac OS X. You won’t get Flash movies or proprietary hardware drivers, but you do get a truly free operating system. Give it a go.

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