TDE Trinity Desktop Environment & Q4OS license: "GPL and other licenses"
 

Q4OS and TDE, i.e. Trinity Desktop Environment are said to be under "GPL and other licenses". I wonder what these other licenses are. Could anyone tell me what are the closed source packages included in this desktop environment and in this OS based on that same environment?

Hi:

Try writing to the TDE Development Team.

https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Trin...op_Environment

AFAIK Q40s is based on Debian Strech stable:-

Thanks but I have already emailed TDE at tpearson@raptorengineeringinc.com as well as Q4OS at q4os@q4os.org but I have received no reply. Hence this post on Linux Questions.

other licenses does not necessarily mean closed source.
it could be a MIT or BSD or Apache license or or or...
i think this actually holds true for all linux distros: each software could be distributed under a different license. have a look in /usr/share/doc, most if not all licenses should be in there.

personal & unfounded opinion, i think Q4OS is a well-made newbie friendly Linux distro, but otherwise there's nothing special about it, in other words don't worry.

A friend of mine ran Q4OS for a while and never had any problems.
From what I was able to tell it was stable and ran exceptionally well. So like ondoho said; don't worry:-;)

Sometimes it takes people on a dev team a while to get back to you. Give it some time; see what happens.

In the meantime Google is your friend. Do a little research if you have the time.

https://www.google.com/search?q=gpl+...ient=firefox-b

Thanks for the /usr/share/doc tip. I didn't know this.

I find Q4OS impressive too although I personally use Debian. I am interested in Q4OS as an alternative to Windows XP for some other people with old laptops. It looks so much like Windows XP that it is easy to use for someone unfamiliar with Linux. It is much better than Zorin OS in terms of mimicking Windows.

I wondered if there was some closed source software because I read that installing TDE on Ubuntu requires enabling the multiverse repository. I wouldn't worry about it... in an ideal world, that is...

yep, me too.
and not only looks - it even has a setup/installer thingymajick!


i should add to my previous comment that almost all linux distros include some closed-source stuff. this is normal, not specific to q4os.
but i don't think that the whole multiverse repo is closed source.

1.8.8 idles in about 125MB of RAM. 2.4 (the latest version I tested) used about 450MB at idle. Was disappointing to say the least. 1.8.8 aka "Orion":
https://q4os.org/downloads3.html

Running vrms, i.e. Virtual Richard Stallman on a fresh Q4OS installation yields the following closed source packages:


# vrms
Non-free packages installed on laptop

atmel-firmware Firmware for Atmel at76c50x wireless networking chips.
bluez-firmware Firmware for Bluetooth devices
firmware-amd-graphics Binary firmware for AMD/ATI graphics chips
firmware-atheros Binary firmware for Atheros wireless cards
firmware-brcm80211 Binary firmware for Broadcom 802.11 wireless cards
firmware-crystalhd Crystal HD Video Decoder (firmware)
firmware-intelwimax Binary firmware for Intel WiMAX Connection
firmware-iwlwifi Binary firmware for Intel Wireless cards
firmware-libertas Binary firmware for Marvell wireless cards
firmware-linux Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kerne
firmware-linux-nonfree Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kerne
firmware-misc-nonfree Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kerne
firmware-realtek Binary firmware for Realtek wired/wifi/BT adapters
firmware-samsung Binary firmware for Samsung MFC video codecs
firmware-zd1211 binary firmware for the zd1211rw wireless driver
libfaac0 AAC audio encoder (library)
nvidia-detect NVIDIA GPU detection utility

Contrib packages installed on laptop

alsa-firmware-loaders ALSA software loaders for specific hardware

17 non-free packages, 1.1% of 1580 installed packages.
1 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1580 installed packages.


This is quite extraordinary since most of these packages are drivers for devices I don't even have! Furthermore, if I install Debian or Ubuntu can with open-source repositories only, everything works fine including WiFi.

As there is no /etc/apt/sources.list file in Q4OS (even though Q4OS is based on Debian) I don't how to tweak Q4OS repositories.

this is a service provided to you by q4os developers: they try to cover most use cases of hardware requiring extra stuff.
if you don't have the hardware, you can uninstall the according packages, but be careful.
though without anything to use these firmwares, they're just sitting there on your hard drive, not causing any harm...

erm.
if it's an apt-based distro, there must be something in /etc/apt. look again, it might be inside sources.list.d.
and most likely q4os has a gui for doing the tweaking.