The Free Software Foundation (FSF) maintains a list of free distributions that contain no proprietary software [1]. Although DistroWatch lists 274 Linux distributions, the FSF lists only 10 free ones, and many of those are no longer developed. A notable exception, Trisquel has released a version every one to three years since 2007 [2] (Figure 1). Trisquel was founded by Rüben Rúdríguez, who remains a leading developer for the distribution. Recently, RodrÌguez took the time to discuss the distribution that has been such a large part of his life for the past 16 years.

Figure 1: The Trisquel desktop.

Linux Magazine (LM): How did Trisquel get started? What were the original goals and was there a decisive moment in the project?

Rüben Rúdríguez (RR): The project started almost 20 years ago, when I was at the University of Vigo in Spain. My university wanted to make a customized GNU/Linux distribution, as it was quite trendy at the time, and I was approached along with other friends that were interested in that technology. I ended up leading this project and eventually (when the trend passed and the university's interest faded) continuing it as an independent project.

When I first got involved in this field, most of my knowledge was technical, from experimentation and some classes and from hacking with my peers in the local user group. It wasn't until a year after the project started, when my school hosted a talk by Richard Stallman, that I learned about the ideas of free software, licensing, and the GNU project. This changed my approach, as I recognized then that we should only provide and recommend software that could be used, studied, modified, and shared freely – more so in the context of a school project.

As a consequence, Trisquel moved from being a Debian derivative with some non-free packages added to a project based on Ubuntu with its proprietary packages removed. The choice was made because of the increasing popularity of Ubuntu (which was released roughly at that time), which pointed to a need for a version of Ubuntu without proprietary components, and because Ubuntu's fixed release cycle would facilitate our work.

LM: What changes to Ubuntu are needed to provide a completely free distribution?

RR: There are three main categories of work: removing non-free packages, removing non-free components from otherwise free packages, and rebranding for trademark compliance.

Removing a proprietary package is relatively simple. We do that through the ubuntu-purge scripts [3] (Figure 2). Currently, we have 150 source packages filtered out, which results in a larger number of binary packages. Adding a package to the list can sometimes require a detailed analysis to investigate licensing or other legal reasons and to make sure there is a free alternative when possible.

Figure 2: Part of a ubuntu-purge script used to remove non-free elements from Ubuntu.

Removing proprietary components from a free package is more involved. It usually requires continuous maintenance to make sure the package remains functional, as well as to minimize the amount of work we need to do when the package is upgraded upstream. The largest of these kind of cases is Linux, for which we use the Linux-libre deblob scripts, which we incorporate into the Ubuntu kernel packaging workflow [4] (Figure 3). Another large example is Firefox, which, among many other customizations, is modified to not use addons.mozilla.org to search for extensions, as that repository contains both free and non-free software.

Figure 3: The start of the script used to remove proprietary blobs from the Linux kernel.

Firefox is also a good example of the rebranding task category. Some packages have a trademark license that has separate requirements from the software license itself. In some cases, it requires that the package must be rebranded if changes are made, as it happens with Mozilla products and Ubuntu itself. Our custom version of Firefox is called Abrowser.

LM: Besides the ethical choice, are there any advantages to a free distro?

RR: Free distros usually make better choices for their default settings in terms of privacy. For example, Abrowser is configured with a more strict privacy configuration than Firefox's default. Trisquel is also configured to minimize automatic (thus unrequested) network connections from different system components and opened network ports.

LM: Are there any disadvantages to a free distro?

RR: We try to make as many hardware devices work as possible, but some require proprietary drivers and will not work on Trisquel as-is. The user can always make the choice to install those components, but we leave that to them and don't recommend (or document) how to do it, as we find it more important to not advertise such software. We recommend resources like h-node.org to check for compatibility.

LM: How does Trisquel compare to other free distros listed by the FSF?

RR: All distributions on the list meet the FSF's Free System Distribution Guidelines (FSDG) [5]. This is different from the FSF's Respects Your Freedom (RYF) list, which is a program for the certification of hardware products – that is, devices that don't require non-free components such as proprietary firmware or drivers to work [6]. The FSDG is a set of recommendations given by the GNU project to produce distributions of GNU that follow the principles of the project. Distributions that follow the guideline are recommended by the FSF and GNU and are used (and sometimes produced) by vendors that are RYF certified, so there is an overlap.

The distributions recommended by the FSF and GNU are mostly listed from their compliance with the FSDG, so it includes a variety of projects with different practical goals. Some are more experimental or hacker-oriented, while some are more specialized (like distributions for embedded devices). Trisquel aims to be very user-friendly, focusing on having strong accessibility features out of the box, a simple design, and good language support. Having a regular release cycle, Trisquel also aims to be a good choice for server infrastructure.

LM: Are free distros becoming more or less popular?

RR: I don't have specific statistics, as we don't track our users. Our server traffic indicates a steady interest in our project, and we have a quite active community participating in forums, mailing lists, and IRC.

LM: Describe the work involved in becoming FSDG-compliant.

RR: In addition to the cleanup of non-free components I mentioned, there are other requirements like not recommending proprietary software in the documentation and on community communication channels like forums and such. An important requirement is self-hosting; it is not enough to make a free installer (like a live image) for a distro that has non-free components in their repositories. Mainly, it focuses on the responsibility that comes from distributing software to others.

LM: Trisquel supports several desktops, such as MATE, LXDE, and Sugar, the desktop originally designed for the educational purposes by One Laptop per Child. Do any of the supported desktops involve special work?

RR: All of the desktops that we distribute as a live environment are quite polished, but the MATE desktop (our recommended default) is the one that takes the most work. MATE is a very good choice for accessibility, due to its good compatibility with screen readers and with keyboard navigation. Our target is that the system must be installable without help for people with disabilities including blindness. It is also a good choice for computers that have no 3D acceleration (which in many cases can only be achieved with non-free drivers), as it is an optional requirement for that desktop.

LM: What other features make Trisquel stand out?

RR: I've mentioned most of the practical advantages, as many stem from the project values in the first place. A goal that goes hand-in-hand with accessibility is the simple design and the ease of use for which we aim.

One thing that is remarkable is how easy it is to contribute improvements. We use quite simple Bash scripts (we call them package-helpers) to apply modifications to upstream packages, which get built and published for testing automatically through our CI infrastructure and then published for production after review.

LM: Do you have any stats on downloads, commits, and developers?

RR: We only track downloads partially, since there are many mirrors that we don't get statistics from. Our main site has counted over a million downloads. Our most active repository is the previously mentioned package-helpers, with over 2,000 commits affecting 300+ source packages. That project has gotten contributions from 25 developers. We also have volunteers helping with the documentation, translations, build systems, and other sub-projects.

LM: How is Trisquel governed? How are decisions made?

RR: Trisquel is established as a non-profit organization registered in Spain, which takes care of the legal and tax required obligations. The project is quite horizontal in its structure, and we make most decisions during the developers' meetings I mentioned. In terms of community management, we are lucky to have a good amount of long-term participants in our forums and lists that are excellent at encouraging newcomers, keeping the conversation on track, and notifying moderators the few times intervention is needed.

LM: Who is the target audience for Trisquel?

RR: We try to make it as wide as possible. Trisquel is not a specialized distro. It is not particularly hacker-oriented, but you can dig into the code and technical details to any depth, so it can be used by people of very different levels of expertise. It targets both desktop and server users, and recently we added ARM and IBM POWER architecture support to expand on the possible use cases. Ultimately we want it to be a very flexible platform for people that are walking up the "freedom ladder" and are exploring and learning about free software.

LM: Are there any future plans?

RR: Our main goals at the moment are to find more developers and other contributors, to renew our main website, and to continue to grow our build infrastructure.

LM: Is there anything else readers should know about Trisquel?

RR: I invite people to try it out, check out our community, and explore the many projects we work on and that always need more contributors. Also, Trisquel is sustained 100 percent from donations from our community [7].