arm-netbook August 2016

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

54 participants
78 discussions

one hour left
by Nick Hardiman 26 Aug '16

26 Aug '16

One hour left, and the pledges keep on coming in. Congratulations to the crew who made all this possible. I know there are many good moral reasons for backing this project. ,The mail archive is full of excellent descriptions of the problems EOMA68 solves - security, e-waste, non-disclosure agreements, power consumption, and so on. I’ll say this successful campaign brings us a step closer towards a real free market for IT. The barrier to entry is so low all the electronic engineers out there can get busy making new products around these general purpose computers. Looking forward to a better - and cheaper - world of modular IT, Nick mail archive http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/pipermail/arm-netbook/

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EOMA68 campaign: welcome to all the new members
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 26 Aug '16

26 Aug '16

btw one thing, very important: welcome to everyone who's joined in the past 2 months! without you we wouldn't be here. feel free to introduce yourselves, say hello. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Future case idea: tamper-resistant desktop like ORWL
by Sam Pablo Kuper 26 Aug '16

26 Aug '16

I'd love to be able to put an EOMA68 card into something like this, instead of the Intel Skylake boards currently offered: https://www.crowdsupply.com/design-shift/orwl I contacted Design Shift, the company behind ORWL, to ask if they would do a case-only offering on their CrowdSupply page, noting that it would potentially work well with EOMA68. I also asked them to provide the design files under a Free Cultural Works license such as GPLv3 :) They haven't responded yet, but I'll try to remember to update this thread if they do. Is anyone working on a tamper-evident enclosure for the EOMA68?

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Getting started making new housings?
by Louis Pearson 26 Aug '16

26 Aug '16

Hello! I am a student going into college for Computer Engineering and I am super excited about the possibilities of this project! I have backed and will be receiving a Libre Tea Computer Card and a breakout board. I have worked with Arduinos a few times and know how to use them on a basic level, though formal electronics stuff (math, mostly) and electronic design are somewhat of a mystery to me. With that in mind, I would like to start working on a new housing for myself (kind of answering the call in the most recent update). I'm unsure of exactly where to begin though. I'd like to make a custom PCB and case (probably 3D printed). What I fell that I am missing is resources for starting to work with EOMA-68 devices. KiCad libraries, FreeCad models, etc. Where would I find this?

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Why Free hardware fails
by Robert Wilkinson 26 Aug '16

26 Aug '16

Hello "Such problems are difficult to handle by themselves. But in addition, any production run has fixed costs that, as Len Leighton, who is currently fundraising for the EOMA68 laptop, explained to me in a private email, remain very much the same regardless of how many units are built. As a result, units in a small run are more expensive, and have a hard time matching the specifications of leading manufacturers. This is a serious problem because, while idealists will buy free hardware for ethical reasons, others potential users will not consider free hardware unless its specs are competitive with the proprietary hardware sold in computer stores." from http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-B… Who is this Len person? Bob -- Civilization, as we know it, will end sometime this evening. See SYSNOTE tomorrow for more information.

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question on Sugar OS
by Pete Link 26 Aug '16

26 Aug '16

I'm new here, so I have a newbie question ;-) The update on Sugar OS mentioned Fedora. So does that mean that Sugar OS will be obtainable if I get the Fedora computer card? Or is the plan to have a separate Sugar OS card offered in the future? I have two grand-daughters, and it would be cool to have each with their own Sugar card that they could store their stuff on. (I don't have any real experience with Sugar, but this would be a good opportunity to learn about it and use it.) Thanks. --pete link

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EOMA68 future roadmap update
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 26 Aug '16

26 Aug '16

https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68/micro-desktop/updates/product-roadmap one of the last i'll be doing before the end of the campaign, goes over the many ideas that people have contributed. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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another crowdsupply project - ORWL
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 25 Aug '16

25 Aug '16

https://www.crowdsupply.com/design-shift/orwl looks totally cool --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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need help! getting a bit overwhelmed on lists.oshwa.org
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 25 Aug '16

25 Aug '16

http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/2016-August/001865.html very similarly minded people, unfortunately using the word "open source" in reference to what are clearly libre principles. if anyone has time i'd really appreciate some help... but also i think people here would genuinely appreciate the opportunity to debate, also there's people there from "open ecology" and many other areas. l. --- crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

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Verifying firmware
by Raphaël Mélotte 25 Aug '16

25 Aug '16

Hello, First of all I have been following the crowdfunding and mailing list since the first of august (I have been using another email adress) and I have to say I really like every aspect of this project and I highly respect and admire the ideology that goes with the project. I haven't been able to pledge until now but I will make sure to do so as soon as I can and before the crowdfunding ends. I really want to test what an EOMA68 laptop would look and behave like, and I want to replace my tiny Raspberry pi server with another EOMA68 (I will also be willing to buy more powerful computer cards if they ever get created). Since the EOMA68 is entirely free, I was thinking that *theoretically* it should be possible to read and verify every firmware, and/or binaries present to run the chip (I don't really know how to call it so I will call it "microcode"). More and more people are worried about the microcodes that are run on our hardware and being able to verify what is actually running on our machine (when it boots for example) would be comforting. It seems to me that it's the first time the source code for every microcode in a computer will be available, since some projects tried to do so in the past, but never achieved to run 100% without proprietary code (purism, novena, ...). >From a security point of view, open source code is the best option since it allows to check if the code being run isn't malware. However, if I don't verify the code present on my machine, how will I know it is the same code as the source that was analyzed and that it is not malicious code ? That's why I'm asking if it would be possible to read the microcodes present on the chip, and check them against the online source codes (kind of a checksum ?). That way we would be able to know if the code had been tampered with, be it during shipping, after being infected by a malware that was somehow able to change the boot code or some firmware, an evil maid attack, etc. Just to be clear I'm not being paranoid to the point where I would suspect some bad guys inserting malware in my machine during shipping (I guess the country I live in is "libre" enough to not do that, but that's surely not the case for everyone everywhere in the world), and I will probably not try to verify every firmware on the chip, but since this is one of the first truly free system I was asking myself if it would be possible. Also maybe being able to do so easily would attract more people who are deeply focused on security and privacy and would be beneficial to the project. I also understand that as of today, checking every code on a system is more an utopia then a doable thing (you'd also have to check firmware from your keyboard, mouse, webcam, USB flash drive, and pretty much everything you connect to the main board) and may be pointless, but I'm also confident that in the future (maybe distant, maybe not) we will have to be able to do so if we want to keep our digital life private, as everything we do is more and more linked to the digital world, and malware techniques are becoming more and more creative (see for example BadUSB). I'm not a computer scientist and although I do my best to learn how software works, I don't understand everything about hardware and I may be missing some important point that makes my idea impossible to realize. That's why I'm asking it here since you know far more about it then me. Also please forgive my written expression: I'm doing my best to express my ideas clearly, but English isn't my native language and I sometimes don't know how to express myself to be best understood. Anyway, I sincerely hope this project becomes a great success, and that you will be able to make it grow even more. Kind regards, Raphaël Mélotte A Bioengineering student interested in computers

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arm-netbook August 2016