GNUser Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 Hello, My name is GNUser and as the name implies, I use GNU system For privacy and security reasons (though also some philosophical ones) I decided to run only free software on my machines. For example my laptop has Trisquel installed which is a FSF approved distro. I also use Debian a lot, with the main repository only available (other repositories might contain or suggest non-free software). My question is this: the images of armbian available here, I understand they are built on top of debian, but which kernel are they using? The kernel that Debian usually provides (for x86/64) is a debblobed kernel, with no proprietary pieces. Is that the case with these images? Also, in terms of drivers, firmware and repositories, do these include any non-free stuff? I understand a lot of people probably don't care about free vs open source, and I am fine with that. I believe we can work together anyway, and I am jsut asking so I know which pieces of software I would have to replace (if possible at all). Thanks! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 The kernel(s) which we are using are blob free but within distribution there are blobs for wireless chips. Feel free to remove the firmware package to be fully on the GNU side I can mention that we are also using a blob for NAND loading on some boards but this will be solved once. Most used kernel in Armbian are: github.com/linux-sunxi/linux-sunxi (slowly going out) www.kernel.org (now and future) Is this more or is this less open source than Debian stock kernel? Generally I can declare this as an 99% GNU project. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GNUser Posted November 12, 2015 Author Share Posted November 12, 2015 HUm... well, you see the thing is that the "official" linux kernel, as provided and managed by Linus Torvalds actually contains blobs. There is a project to deblob linux kernel, you can read about it in http://www.fsfla.org/ikiwiki/selibre/linux-libre/ You should consider using a linux-libre version, or maybe deblob your own. Debian use their own version of linux kernel, but it's fully free (they ditched the proprietary firmware long ago). If you would like to read on that you can find this a good read too https://trisquel.info/en/forum/difference-between-linux-libre-kernel-and-debian-main-kernel I don't know about linux-sunxi, but I don't really think it's a deblobed version. Why do you need the blobs for wifi? Banana Pi for example has wifi that (i believe) has free drivers (ap6 something...?) Thanks for the info anyway :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Igor Posted November 13, 2015 Share Posted November 13, 2015 OK, thank you for this! I have to pull back those 99% if we look from this perspective. None of those is cleaned to such degree at least not by me or not by my knowing. Why do we need blobs? I was speaking generally - for all boards. I added for Cubox wifi, Intel mPci that I use and some popular Realteks which come on USB. First question is - what do we loose by moving to cleaned / libre kernel? My primary goal within Armbian is to maintain a base system / kernel and that already become a hard job. I support and like the idea of blob free kernel but am currently supporting 6 different kernels. I would need a help to change this. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GNUser Posted November 13, 2015 Author Share Posted November 13, 2015 I can't give you rigth away a list of "this won't work, that will work". BUT, I am sure I can get a lot of that info for you in a matter of days. And, if you are interested in giving this a try, I can maybe provide you with a deblobed kernel. Even more, I can try calling in some other people (who know how to handle this stuff way better than me) to help! I think I would pose things differently: what do we have to gain by using 100% FLOSS? Well, from a security point of view, there are no closed-source / binary-only programs running, so if a bug or exploit arises, we can handle that ourselves. We don't have to rely on any other party to solve the issue. Think about Adobe Flash, for example. A security nightmare that only Adobe can solve. And they never did so. Good thing it's almost gone :-P From a privacy point of view (for me it's very important), we are sure what the machine is doing. No chances of a backdoor or unknown bug that activates microphone or webcam without telling me first. We can be sure that no driver or firmware is sending any sensitive information when "doing an update", or "filling a bug form". From a hacking point of view, it's much more liberating, powerful and even FUN! Not having to deal with closed source binaries we can see everything that is happening in the system, and we can change everything. We are totally free to deal with things our way. So, you see, maybe some things will need some additional work, but I believe we have more to gain than to lose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zador.blood.stained Posted November 13, 2015 Share Posted November 13, 2015 AFAIK, bluetooth and Wi-Fi support on cubietruck (and other boards that use ap6210 module) requires firmware and if there are no FOSS drivers for this module (or they have limited functionality), @GNUser, I'm assuming you will personally answer every question about Wi-Fi or bluetooth not working after kernel upgrade? Right now, if I understand things correctly, firmware is provided as standalone package (linux-firmware-image-....deb) and you are free to not install it or remove it from your system. If you can find and even test FOSS drivers for wireless modules that you can find on boards supported by this community (i.e. ap6210) and this driver supports HT40 and channels 12&13, this actually will be great. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlenWalker Posted March 9, 2016 Share Posted March 9, 2016 I haven't bought an A20 board yet but I am also interested in funning with 100% Free software so if there is any way I can help out please do get in touch... As far as I'm aware for boards like the A20-OlinuXino-LIME it should be possible to run with a libre version of GNU/Linux provided that the GPU drivers are not used - this could be ideal for a server? If using the GPU (for OlinuXino board) then you'll need the closed source proprietary drivers from ARM or at some point in the future the Lima driver or variant - currently the Lima driver is still being worked on... For WiFi or Bluetooth there are USB options available that could be used in freedom - they're available from ThinkPenguin among other places. I'm not sure about the built-in chips on the supported boards but my gut reaction would be that they are unlikely to be supported in freedom (most board manufacturers don't consider freedom an issue when they're making these boards). Another thing to consider is the bootloader - how sure are we that the uBoot we are using doesn't contain any binary blobs? I know that some boards require blobs just to boot but I don't know about the ones that armbian supports - if someone could clear that up it would be a weight off my mind. Finally - if anyone else is interested in 100% Free Single Board computers then there is a list maintained at the FSF. Currently there aren't any perfect boards out there, but I think the Allwinner boards have some of the best potential at the moment. https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers What is missing is a Trisquel-like equivalent GNU/Linux build that can be installed easily onto these boards - maybe what we need is a script that can be run on Armbian after its been installed that will de-blob the software so then users have a choice to remove any blobs? I think scripts that do this are available for Trisquel and Parabola so maybe it would be possible to adapt them for the ARM world? I'm off to do a bit more research... @GNUser how did you get on with your own research? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vlad Posted March 10, 2016 Share Posted March 10, 2016 Finally - if anyone else is interested in 100% Free Single Board computers then there is a list maintained here: https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers there is no board there which runs only with free software Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GlenWalker Posted March 14, 2016 Share Posted March 14, 2016 there is no board there which runs only with free software Yeah I said there was no perfect solution and have edited my original post to make it a bit clearer - apologies if what I wrote came across incorrectly... The list at the FSF is maintained and updated (although I don't know the frequency of the updates - it will probably rely on people discovering or creating a new board and sending it in for evaluation). So if you are interested in running 100% free software its not a bad place to start. Essentially what I was getting at is that there currently is no suitable solution to run 100% freely on ARM...there is always a compromise to be made somewhere...(be that running non-free GPU firmware, running with software rendering for the graphics or just running headless). What the list does show, and its important to remember, is that not all boards are equally free. Personally I think that the ARM world offers us a great chance to run freely though because there is no microcode in the CPU itself so when/if we have suitable firmware/drivers that are open then there might be a chance to create a fully open computer. For completeness I feel I should point out that there are quite a lot of different efforts underway to create open source graphics drivers for ARM platforms - a list of these can be found on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_device_driver#ARM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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