Frequent questions

"Why another distro?"

PicaLibre is not a project of newbies eager to publish something with our name. PicaLibre is a project resulting from a growing need for Pica Pica HackLab (PicaHack) which has been uninterruptedly carrying out libre/free computing dissemination activities since 2010, time during which we have accumulated numerous self-created applications as a result of the needs observed in the people participating in our activities, which have reached a number that makes it too cumbersome to apply them as post-installation modifications, coupled with the fact that all the operating systems that we have used in the numerous installations at this time have either ended or have been privatized.

"Such a component of my computer does not work"

It is possible that there is a solvable configuration problem, a free driver needs to be installed, or it does not work with free software. In the latter case, it is possible to install certain non-free software (driver and/or firmware), although from PicaLibre propose to reflect on the alternative of undertaking critical consumer actions that allow us to make our small personal contribution to making our society a better society by defending free computing: buy and replace that component with another that does work with free software (for example a small USB WiFi connector costs only 1-3 €), report the problem to the seller and/or manufacturer, and publicly disseminate the situation encouraging other people to do the same, it is also possible to donate money to free software development projects that seek to make that component work. Conversely, it is also good to highlight everything that works using only free software, because unfortunately there is a smear campaign that wants to disqualify free operating systems as if they do not work, which is a lie. Another common non-constructive position is to criticize free operating systems because the manufacturer of a component makes it not work with free software, a situation in which criticism should focus just the opposite.

Contact by writing to e-mail pica (a) picalibre.org (replace " (a) " with "@") with the description of the problem, attaching the compressed file with all the important system information generated by PicaInfo application.

"Why do you include such an application if there is a newer one?"

Newer does not necessarily mean better. Older does not necessarily mean worse, nor does it necessarily mean better. Simply the age of an application does not mean anything by itself.

PicaLibre includes a selection of the best applications in our opinion. In some cases we select a new application that performs its function better than the application that was most used previously, in other cases we select the application that was most used previously although a new application that is presented as "the new replacement" is currently in fashion despite making its function worse.

The version of each included application may not be the latest currently existing version, but rather an older one, due to the testing process carried out before finally including it. This approach usually provides more benefits than drawbacks. Note that the versions of the applications vary between the different versions of PicaLibre.