On Tuesday 2. May 2017 15.45.38 Evaggelos Balaskas wrote:
Here is my suggestion: pinebook
Does that use the same Allwinner SoC as the Olimex laptop...?
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/fosdem-and-teres-i-update/
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source- hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/
The situation was apparently changing when I posted a comment on the second article, but mainline, blob-free kernel support was not yet there. Or maybe it was, but the documentation doesn't get updated to reflect the current status:
I guess the software is just one thing holding up the Olimex laptop, particularly since they might be a bit more wary of bad publicity around binary blobs and Allwinner's tendency to produce copyright-infringing software to demonstrate their products. So the software has to be done properly and to a standard that most people will accept, which means that the Pine64 software should be closely inspected for licence compliance.
Paul
P.S. There are hardware pages on the FSFE Wiki that should be documenting these things.
On 02/05/17 16:54, Paul Boddie wrote:
On Tuesday 2. May 2017 15.45.38 Evaggelos Balaskas wrote:
Here is my suggestion: pinebook
Does that use the same Allwinner SoC as the Olimex laptop...?
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/fosdem-and-teres-i-update/
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source- hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/
The situation was apparently changing when I posted a comment on the second article, but mainline, blob-free kernel support was not yet there. Or maybe it was, but the documentation doesn't get updated to reflect the current status:
I guess the software is just one thing holding up the Olimex laptop, particularly since they might be a bit more wary of bad publicity around binary blobs and Allwinner's tendency to produce copyright-infringing software to demonstrate their products. So the software has to be done properly and to a standard that most people will accept, which means that the Pine64 software should be closely inspected for licence compliance.
Paul
P.S. There are hardware pages on the FSFE Wiki that should be documenting these things.
Is this type of thing duplicated between FSFE, FSF, LibrePlanet and other wikis?
Regards,
Daniel
On Tuesday 2. May 2017 17.23.16 Daniel Pocock wrote:
On 02/05/17 16:54, Paul Boddie wrote:
P.S. There are hardware pages on the FSFE Wiki that should be documenting these things.
Is this type of thing duplicated between FSFE, FSF, LibrePlanet and other wikis?
Probably. The page on the FSFE Wiki was maintained as an attempt to provide updated vendor information, though, whereas the FSF seem to maintain a hardware database and some kind of list of recommendations.
http://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/Hardware/Hardware_Vendors
Maintaining vendor lists is fairly tiresome, though, because the Web sites tend to change and products get retired without a trace. Also, it isn't clear whether people get much use out of the above page. Since the usability has been somewhat impaired by the removal of the table-sorting (and "nicer on the eyes" editing) functionality since the wiki was migrated, it is now probably almost as much of a chore to investigate the listed vendors as it is to maintain the list.
In any case, it is possibly better to focus on vendors that offer products to a higher standard than merely not foisting Windows on people when they buy something, although vendors that do allow people to "build" their own computer are useful to know about.
Paul
On Tuesday 2. May 2017 16.54.40 Paul Boddie wrote:
On Tuesday 2. May 2017 15.45.38 Evaggelos Balaskas wrote:
Here is my suggestion: pinebook
[...]
I guess the software is just one thing holding up the Olimex laptop, particularly since they might be a bit more wary of bad publicity around binary blobs and Allwinner's tendency to produce copyright-infringing software to demonstrate their products. So the software has to be done properly and to a standard that most people will accept, which means that the Pine64 software should be closely inspected for licence compliance.
Here's some relevant information from a review:
"So, just like last time, the main issues with the Pinebook seem to be around the software. Things are vastly improved over the state of things when Pine released their original board, unlike the original Pine A64 board the Pinebook is actually useable. However Pine have made it very clear that, “…it will largely be up to the community to help further develop and improve the BSP [Board Support Package] Linux experience on the device.”"
http://hackaday.com/2017/04/28/hands-on-with-the-pinebook/
Although I have read (justified or otherwise) criticism of Olimex taking this "but we only make the hardware" attitude with previous products, they at least do seem to understand that this isn't acceptable with A64-based products. Of course, it is nice that people can put together hardware and deliver it to other people who are more capable with software than hardware, but delivering unusable products, potentially showcased with dubious chipset vendor software, is rather irresponsible.
As Free Software advocates, we also shouldn't allow hardware manufacturers to present us with potentially impossible or unfeasible challenges, where it may not even be possible to support seemingly attractive hardware with Free Software thanks to missing documentation or obstruction by chipset vendors.
Paul