Trisquel 5.5 available!

Finally has arrived Trisquel 5.5 STS «Brigantia»! This edition has taken longer than expected but it has been worth it, given that although it suffered a large number of changes in several key components, and they have managed to perform many improvements while they prepared the system for the imminent new edition with long-term support.

This version is the first of Trisquel based on GNOME 3, GTK 3 and also Linux-libre 3.0.0. GNOME 3 was a great challenge, since as designed for now, it is not usable by the Trisquel community. The default interface of GNOME 3 is the GNOME Shell, a program that requires 3d acceleration to work, since it depends on the OpenGL composition. Unfortunately, many graphics cards today still lack a free driver that provides this level of acceleration, so many users who choose to use free drivers would be redirected to an "emergency" desktop environment. The developers believe that in this way many users might feel the urge to install non-free drivers to be able to use the new desktop environment, so it was decided to take the "alternative" environment to use it by default, and improve it as necessary. possible. Fortunately, this alternative environment is a GTK 3 implementation of the GNOME 2.x panel, which is not only very usable, and even more stable than the original, but also supports accessibility features, in which GNOME Shell currently falters. .

Another advantage of using this default "alternative" environment is that it has been able to provide the same desktop distribution that many Trisquel users have become accustomed to. Of course it is possible to adapt and personalize it with panels and applets, as always.

This edition includes, among many others:

• Linux-libre 3.0.0
• GNOME 3.2
• abrowser 11
• LibreOffice 3.4.4

Continuing with their commitment to accessibility, they have managed to improve integration with the Orca screen reader and other universal access tools. It was not easy, given that they have been affected by the changes in the base libraries, but the results have been worth it. If you use the i18n DVD, the screen reader will boot at startup, allowing visually impaired users to install Trisquel themselves, obtaining a system in which the access manager is also accessible. There is a long way to go to be perfect, but they are on the right track.

Another improvement is that many NVIDIA graphics cards now have 3D acceleration support through the free Nouveau driver, which has gone from experimental to the set of pre-installed packages.