GRUB puts username + password login for debian

I'm speculating here, but it could be due a poor first impression, as I mentioned in my thread you linked. If there are messed up *really basic* things right when you first install, it calls into question the other decisions the distribution maintainers may have made elsewhere. Especially if someone is stubbornly clinging to a non-user friendly choices (which it sounds like is the case here). The ABSOLUTE BARE MINIUMUM that should be done is warn people in the installer that "Oh, hey by the way, do you have other OSs installed on this machine? Well don't plan on using them until you remove the grub password, which by the way IS NOT your regular username and password. Plan on consulting the Trisquel forums or searching the internet for a fix, because we're not telling you what it is."

On a philosophical note, it would seem desirable that Trisquel can demonstrate that going free (in the RMS/GNU sense of the word) will give you more control over your system. This is one of the important tenets of the free software movement. Taking away control over someone's boot partitions right off the bat is almost a Microsoft trick (although they might nuke your Debian install outright, instead of just nuking your bootloader).

Think of it this way, since Trisquel is closely related to Ubuntu, when you do the install, are you giving your users more options, more freedom, than Ubuntu? Or less? Wouldn't you agree that making free software as no hassle as possibile should be a goal? You are really filtering out a lot of people if you make them choose between "convenient and mostly free" and "less convenient and 100% free".

If you bought a car and the dealership went out while you were signing paperwork and re-keyed all of your other cars and your house and didn't give you the keys until you asked for them, would you be happy with that? It's basically the same thing, just a different magnitude.