This long awaited release is based on Ubuntu Precise, and as usual comes full of free software goodness. We continue to provide an easy to use classic desktop experience complete with full featured browsing, office, communications and social networking utilities. Download it while it is hot!

New Features

Linux-Libre 3.2

Xorg

Abrowser 19

GNOME 3.4

LibreOffice 3.5

A better browser

Our web browser without a name (Abrowser, a Firefox derivative that does not recommend non-free software) now comes with shiny new features, like full html5 video support (webm, h264 and other formats) that allow to use sites like Youtube without a flash plugin. This version can also show pdf files without a plugin, and implement instant messaging web applications based on WebRTC.

Accessible by default

In the quest for an improved experience for disabled users that we started some releases ago we used to make an special version (the International live DVD) that came with the digital ramps turned on by default. In this release we took that idea one step further and now all the images are equally accessible for visually impaired users: if while booting the live cd you don't touch any key and let the 30 seconds countdown finish, the screen reader will be on when the desktop is launched.

Extended support

This release is a Long Term Support one, meaning that bugfix and security updates will be published until 2017. Along with this we have decided to change our release schedule from this point on: we will no longer publish short term support versions every 6 months, but focus on giving the best possible support to the LTS release, providing backported improvements to core packages like the kernel, the browser and the xorg server among others. We will also make it easier for volunteers to provide newer versions of extra packages through an optional community-backports repository.

We will publish point releases every 6 months including all improvements done to the system in that time.

How to update

If you are running Trisquel 4.0 or 5.5, a system upgrade will be available in the system updater application (if you run a server use "sudo do-release-upgrade"). If you use Trisquel 4.5 or 5.0 you need to apply each update step (4.5, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0) or upgrade manually. Ask for instructions to an experienced user to do so, in our forums, mailing lists or IRC channels.

How to help

With this release we are maintaining enough sources to produce over a thousand packages adapted to Trisquel to either improve their freedom, user privacy, usability and accessibility among other features. We run all our main resources ourselves (compilation, distribution and web servers) and all our online services run on our own machines to make us completely self contained. This is a big effort, and we would like you to take part in it. We are improving our development services to make room for volunteer hackers to join in a community effort to improve the system, but if you don't know how to debug or maintain packages you can still contribute by improving the wiki, help others in the forums, translating, or finding and reporting bugs. And if you don't have time for it you can help by making donations, joining our membership program, or buying gifts in our stores.