[Trisquel-announce] Trisquel 8.0 LTS Flidas released

[Ruben Rodriguez]

Images are available at https://trisquel.info/en/download or directly at
http://cdimage.trisquel.info/ and its mirrors.

Release notes available online at
https://trisquel.info/en/trisquel-80-lts-flidas

Trisquel 8.0, codename "Flidas" is finally here! This release will be
supported with security updates until April 2021. The first thing to
acknowledge is that this arrival has been severely delayed, to the point
where the next upstream release (Ubuntu 18.04 LTS) will soon be
published. The good news is that the development of Trisquel 9.0 will
start right away
[https://trisquel.info/en/trisquel-90-development-plans], and it should
come out closer to the usual release schedule of "6 months after
upstream release".

But this is not to say that we shouldn't be excited about Trisquel 8.0,
quite the contrary! It comes with many improvements over Trisquel 7.0,
and its core components (kernel, graphics drivers, web browser and
e-mail client) are fully up to date and will receive continuous upgrades
during Flidas' lifetime.

Trisquel 8.0 has benefited from extensive testing, as many people have
been using the development versions as their main operating system for
some time. On top of that, the Free Software Foundation has been using
it to run the Libreplanet conference since last year, and it has been
powering all of its new server infrastructure as well!

What's new?

The biggest internal change to the default edition is the switch from
GNOME to MATE 1.12. The main reason for this change was that GNOME
dropped support for their legacy desktop, which retained the GNOME 2.x
user experience and didn't require 3D composition -- a feature that in
many computers would still need non-free software to run at full speed.
MATE provides a perfect drop-in replacement, it is very light and stable
and it retains all the user experience design that we are used to from
previous Trisquel releases.

The next most important component is Abrowser 59 (based on Mozilla
Firefox), which is not only fully-featured and quite faster than before,
it has also been audited and tweaked to maximize the user's privacy
without compromising on usability. Abrowser will not start any network
connections on its own (most popular web browsers connect for extension
updates, telemetry, geolocation and other data-collection as soon as you
open them, even if you haven't even typed an address yet!) and it has a
list of easy to set, privacy-enhancing settings that the user can opt-in
depending on their needs. As a companion to it, and based on Mozilla
Thunderbird, the IceDove mail client is also fully updated and set up
for privacy.

Trisquel 8.0 also comes with the following preinstalled packages:
 * Linux-libre 4.4 by default, 4.13 available (and newer versions will
be published as an optional rolling release)
 * Xorg 7.7 with optional rolling-release updates
 * LibreOffice 5.1.4
 * VLC 2.2.2

Trisquel-mini (the light edition based on LXDE) uses the Midori web
browser, Sylpheed email client, Abiword text editor, and GNOME-Mplayer
media player as its main preinstalled components. We also have the
Trisquel TOAST edition, based on the Sugar learning environment v112
[https://sugarlabs.org/], and complete with a selection of educational
activities for k12 and beyond. And of course, available from our
repositories and mirrors are over 25,000 more free software packages you
can run, study, improve and share.

Support our effort

Trisquel is a non-profit project, you can contribute by becoming a
member, donating or buying from our store:

https://trisquel.info/en/member
https://trisquel.info/en/donate
https://trisquel.info/en/store