Trisquel 8.0 is the latest release of Trisquel Linux Distribution that’s endorsed by the Free Software Foundation. this release based on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, using MATE desktop 1.12 as default desktop environment and powered by Linux-libre 4.4 LTS kernel.
The desktop environment shifted over to MATE as they wanted a Linux desktop not requiring OpenGL acceleration due to not wanting to require binary drivers or even binary GPU microcode files for that matter, ruling out 3D hardware acceleration for most newer GPUs.