Trisquel (full name Trisquel GNU/Linux) is a computer operating system, a Linux distribution, derived from another distribution, Ubuntu. The project aims for a fully free software system without proprietary software or firmware and uses a version of Ubuntu's modified kernel, with the non-free code (binary blobs) removed. Trisquel relies on user donations. Its logo is a triskelion, a Celtic symbol. Trisquel is listed by the Free Software Foundation as a distribution that contains only free software.
Overview
Four basic versions are available.
Trisquel
The standard Trisquel distribution includes the MATE desktop environment and graphical user interface (GUI), and English, Spanish and 48 other localizations, 50 in total, on a 2.6 GB live DVD image. Other translations can be downloaded if an internet connection is present during installation.
Trisquel Mini
Trisquel Mini is an alternative to mainline Trisquel, designed to run well on netbooks and older hardware. It uses the low-resource environment LXDE and lightweight GTK+ and X Window System alternatives to GNOME and Qt-KDE applications. The LXDE desktop only includes English and Spanish localizations, and can install from a 1.2 GB live DVD image.
Triskel
Triskel is another alternative to mainline Trisquel using the KDE graphical interface, available as a 2.0 GB ISO DVD live image.
Trisquel Sugar TOAST
Sugar is a free and open source desktop environment designed with the goal of being used by children for interactive learning. Sugar replaces the standard MATE desktop environment available with Trisquel.
Trisquel NetInstall
NetInstall consists of a 25MB CD iso image with just the minimal amount of software to start the installation via a text based network installer and fetch the remaining packages over the Internet.
Internationalization
The full installation includes 51 languages (Albanian, Arabic, Aranese, Asturian, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Central Khmer, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Low German, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, Occitan, Punjabi, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Valencian and Vietnamese) pre-installed in a downloadable 1.2-gigabyte DVD image.
Source code for the full Trisquel installation is also available in a downloadable 3-gigabyte DVD image.
History
The project began in 2004 with sponsorship of the University of Vigo for Galician language support in education software and was officially presented in April 2005 with Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project, as a special guest. According to project director Rubén Rodríguez, the support for Galician has created interest in South American and Mexican communities of emigrants from the Province of Ourense.
By December 2008, Trisquel was included by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in its list of Linux distributions endorsed by the Free Software Foundation.
Release history
The releases that use GNOME 3.x use GNOME Classic/Flashback, rather than the default GNOME Shell. All Trisquel releases starting with version 6 are only based on Ubuntu LTS releases.
Current versions include this common software: Abrowser, a rebranded version of Firefox that never suggests non-free add-ons, and includes no trademarked art or names. It features privacy enhancing modifications such as not starting network connections on its own. It is rebranded because the Mozilla Trademark Policy forbids modifications that include their trademark without consent.
Prior editions: Gnash, a SWF viewer, instead of Adobe Flash Player, which is proprietary software.
Trisquel Pro was business-oriented and small. It was part of the Trisquel 2.0 LTS Robur (2008), but no other release followed. Trisquel Edu was education-oriented, for schools and universities. Like Trisquel Pro, no other release followed Trisquel 2.0 Robur (2008). Trisquel on Sugar was education-oriented, based on the Sugar desktop environment for interactive learning for children. It was released at the same time as Trisquel 7. Trisquel Gamer was an independent edition maintained by David Zaragoza. It included 55 free software games and could boot from a live DVD or USB drive. It was released with Trisquel 3.5 (2010), which is no longer supported.