arm-netbook April 2017

arm-netbook@lists.phcomp.co.uk

42 participants
31 discussions

Re: [Arm-netbook] System 76 - Entering Phase 3
by Bill Kontos 25 Apr '17

25 Apr '17

No, don't worry. I don't call names on anyone. As RMS said, I'm not glad that he died, but I'm glad that he's gone. I believe in the value of human life above all else. It would be immoral( imo) to apply crude logic to this. I do not celebrate the death of any human being no matter how savage or harmful that person might have been to humanity. And I sure won't celebrate Linus' death because you might hate him but it won't change the fact that we 100% rely on his work and we don't know how his death could affect future development of linux and free drivers in general. I guess it is a matter of how each individual thinks: For me it makes no sense to discuss how something will work if we can't get it to work our way in the first place. In other words: computing will be done and programs will be written, the question is do you want to be a part of the procedure and help do it your way or just sit in the corner waiting for the perfect solution to come up before you commit to it ? Because that solution might not come. Other people are much more idealists than me. That's fine. We need both types of people. But before you decide to completely ignore system76 and their efforts, I need to point out that they have indeed supplied a lot of code and have benefited the libre hardware community in general a lot. I have been looking at their history and various interviews of them and from what I've gathered: 1) They have contributed code both to Ubuntu specific packages( installer, unity) and to the kernel, that is writing DACs( as an example given) and pushing companies for open sourcing drivers. In fact if there is one that takes advantage of their effort it is Dell who according to Daniel Fore( one of their employees) takes advantage of that hardware on their Xps Developer's edition. 2) They do seem to like the cooperative nature of FOSS. At least their blog posts do show so. System76 started as a 2 man business installing linux on clevo laptops. Then they started expanding the range of their activities by working on drivers and paying a lot of attention to the details. The "purists" right now are probably thinking that the main goal is to just get it working in a libre way, but high quality is actually important too. So it might just be that they consider shipping a 100% libre computer that will be useful to their demographic something out of their reach as of right now. And when it comes to laptops it's not like they have many choices, it's intel for the cpus and nvidia for the gpus. Amd is non existent and arm for laptops of the class they are selling is still not a thing. 3) They are the biggest customer of Clevo and as such their word holds a lot of value and they do push towards making a lot of linux friendly decisions. See this comment https://www.reddit.com/r/System76/comments/611zf5/question_how_much_control… And anyway something that is not widely known: when arm netbooks started becoming a thing OEMs were putting linux on them( of course). Microsoft saw a very threatening market emerging and raged hell upon them that if they kept doing this the sales of their other models would suffer due to them removing the OEM discount on the windows license. After that they proceeded to change the model so instead of charging per machine they charge per model. So basically even if you buy e.g. a Dell Lattitude with Ubuntu preinstalled and then wipe it and replace it with an FSF approved distro YOU ARE STILL PAYING THE WINDOWS LICENSE. Now some people might disagree with me, but for me libre software is a war against oppression and is directly competing with microsoft etc( disagree as in that we do not compete but exist to fulfeel our own needs). So just for this reason, if you need to buy an x86 computer and a libreboot model is not an option it is better to buy a system76 instead of e.g. a dell or a thinkpad and then install gnu/linux on it. Anyway I guess there is also another big difference for me: Some people might think it is ok to have a binary blob e.g. on the firmware for their wifi card as long as you don't interact with it via userland and the OS and the applications are libre. I'm on the exact opposite position: I consider blobs and an operating system that limit or obscure my access to hardware to be of the most unethical nature and less so the programs themselves. Because I have paid for the hardware but an application might come for no cost, therefor I do not have any demands from the author of that application. Will I run it if it's not free ? probably not. But at the end of the day you do pay with your wallet and for that reason I am not e.g. buying nvidia hardware, even though it's the only 100% libre gpu with 3d accel. I don't care. I'd much rather support amd in their free driver efforts and instead hope that someone will pick the fact that they do not need to write any gallium3D stuff but just reverse engineer the (small) blobs that still exist, resulting in a much easier way to write a 100% libre driver compared to nuveau. My point is, do I think System76 is perfect ? No. Do I like what they do ? Yes I like it a lot. Do I think they could be more vigilant with their interactions with other companies when it comes to free drivers ? Absolutely. But I think it is a better solution than anything else( or at least has been until purism dropped the ME neutralization bomb on skylake a bit earlier). But at least give some respect to a company that started putting gnu/linux on laptops on freaking 2005 and managed to survive and thrive. Maybe because their choices of including some proprietary software actually made it possible. Heck, even purism which as a company started exactly with the purpose of selling 100% libre computers had to put up with the intel ME for some generations until they finally found a way to disable it. So now you can actually buy a skylake laptop that has the ME neutralized. Maybe if they did not attempt a 'half-assed" effort first they would never get to that point. On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 5:32 PM, Lyberta <lyberta(a)lyberta.net> wrote: > Bill Kontos: > > I'm tired of all the purists that will bash every company that does a > > step in the right direction but does not go all the way through, even > when > > that company was started somewhere around 2005 in a guy's basement when > the > > ecosystem was much less mature and they had almost no funding at all( or > > because they call it linux and not GNU/Linux). > > And I'm tired of companies exploiting hard work of the GNU project and > Free Software movement. I'm tired of the Open Source movement. I'm tired > of Linux, I'm tired of Linus Torvalds. He puts blobs in the kernel and > calls it acceptable. In the end we get tons of products that are > completely unusable. Check any Android phone and you'll that it is full > of proprietary blobs for everything, that is completely unusable without > them. > > Every time you call the operating system Linux, you help Open Source > movement. You help Google, you help Linux foundation, you help evil > corporations. Linux was the most damaging thing that happened to the > Free Software movement because people started mixing the terms Free > Software and Open Source. People became unaware of 4 fundamental freedoms. > > I have celebrated the death of Steve Jobs and I'm going to celebrate the > death of Linus Torvalds. And before you start calling me names, let me > tell that I was officially declared mentally disabled. But if there is > one good thing that my mental disability gave me, it's the inability to > accept compromises. I value my 4 fundamental freedoms and I'm not going > to give them away without a fight. > > > _______________________________________________ > arm-netbook mailing list arm-netbook(a)lists.phcomp.co.uk > http://lists.phcomp.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/arm-netbook > Send large attachments to arm-netbook(a)files.phcomp.co.uk >

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Certification attempt
by Brandon Ludwig 23 Apr '17

23 Apr '17

Bear with me, because I'm not in any way qualified for this, but a while back I did some work based on previous discussion about certification marks.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] System 76 - Entering Phase 3
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 23 Apr '17

23 Apr '17

> While someone's at it, perhaps Think Penguin should be contacted. > Actually, I just checked and they seem to have invited Luke to their > table at HOPE, so they are well aware of and interested in the project. they're the sponsor of the 15.6in libre laptop, tor :) zap, john, lyberta: yeah i'm finding it tiring, and frickin hard work. but there's something else that occurred to me almost... i think it was over eight years ago, which spurred this entire project, which i believe will help. i think what you're feeling, especially you lyberta, is a sort of "futility" of the effectiveness of the free software movement precisely *because* it's focussed *on* software, exclusively. i mentioned this before, but it's worth reiterating: chris from thinkpenguin told me the story of why he started a hardware selling company: it's because one of his first jobs was for lindows^Wlinspire as a QA tester. unlike many of the other people in the company - including the other QA testers - he quickly and *comprehensively* realised that, unlike microsoft whose dominance of hardware forces peripheral manufacturers to write drivers *BEFORE* releasing the hardware, linux kernel drivers are written AFTER release... if at all, making linspire's entire business model a hopelessly optimistic one. (linspire basically aimed to be a "preinstall" option on hard drives shipped out to OEMs, just like microsoft has done for decades). from the ridiculousness of this attempt at the time (it was far too early basically) and with HDDs going out that comprehensively even failed to *boot* on OEM's hardware in many cases, chris *clearly* saw in ways that many other people would never get to see that the only way to sell working hardware was to *pre-vet the hardware*. contrast this to linspire's approach which was: "we naively expect all hardware to just... well... work". even apple don't do that. in their early days they sold pre-approved special hardware: you bought that, they wrote the drivers themselves, it worked. and if you didn't you were on your own. what they sold was pretty much everything you needed, and it wasn't long before hardware companies started making software drivers *BEFORE* releasing hardware for apple products as well. so chris *DOES NOT* have the same level of tired hopelessness and frustrating futility that other people are feeling in the software libre world. instead however he has a constant race to find hardware that can be freed from proprietary drivers: the AR9271 took *TWO YEARS* to patiently walk the entire company (atheros) through the process of releasing the source code, justified easily by the increased sales. the problem there was that when qualcomm bought atheros the entire management and engineering team left, leaving absolutely nobody for him to contact for the revision 10 (802.11ac) hardware. likewise: he could see that time is running out for the thinkpad X.200 older intel processors, and he was getting increasingly concerned at the lack of hardware companies producing laptop products that he could endorse (because they keep using AMD or intel with proprietary BIOS components). so that's when he contacted me, to sponsor the 15.6in libre laptop. in summary: we're getting tired because there *are* no good hardware options. reverse-engineering is... well it's a nice challenge but you always get *old hardware*, not designed by you, but designed by someone else. that's.... well, i don't have to spell it out. so for goodness sake: every person who is building open and libre hardware, back them to the hilt. the powerpc-notebook team, the vero-apparatus team (if you can find their contact details that is), anyone and everyone. l.

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Mail service problems
by Alain Williams 23 Apr '17

23 Apr '17

On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 08:59:35PM +0100, Alain Williams wrote: > Apologies for poor mail service today. There have been disk problems. The > hosting company has been working since this morning to fix things - but there > are still some unexpected down-time/reboots. > > Thanks for your patience The machine is back up ... not quite 100% - there may be some bounces later. One of the main data stores became corrupt, I had to completely wipe and restore from backup. This affected all email and mail lists. You might find that some mail sent in the last 18 hours has got lost. If really interested, some more background to what went wrong here: https://status.bytemark.org/issues/170 -- Alain Williams Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer. +44 (0) 787 668 0256 http://www.phcomp.co.uk/ Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php #include <std_disclaimer.h>

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Re: [Arm-netbook] System 76 - Entering Phase 3
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 23 Apr '17

23 Apr '17

On Sat, Apr 22, 2017 at 12:48 PM, Allan Mwenda <allanitomwesh(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I've asked a System76 staffer if they'd work with EOMA68 i emailed the founders yesterday after being told by sales(a)system76.com their email addresses. what i want to do is to offer them an opportunity to discuss and make them aware of *all* options that i know of. the powerpc-notebook team, and more besides. l.

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Mail service problems
by Alain Williams 22 Apr '17

22 Apr '17

Apologies for poor mail service today. There have been disk problems. The hosting company has been working since this morning to fix things - but there are still some unexpected down-time/reboots. Thanks for your patience -- Alain Williams Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer. +44 (0) 787 668 0256 http://www.phcomp.co.uk/ Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php #include <std_disclaimer.h>

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System 76 - Entering Phase 3
by Mike Leimon 22 Apr '17

22 Apr '17

Luke, et.al. I saw this blog post a couple of nights ago: http://blog.system76.com/post/159767214983/entering-phase-three and I was thinking to myself that it might not be a half bad idea to try and contact these guys and see if they might be interested in making an EOMA-68 laptop and maybe even get into the business of designing EOMA-68 CPU cards. While I think that they have more traditional computer/laptops in mind for the future, I could also see the possibility of them offering one EOMA-68 laptop for sale along a number of other traditional style laptops (why shouldn't they hedge their bets?). Allow me to pull the most relevant quote from their post to support my theory: """ * Easy to work on and expand At every step along the way we ask, “How does this decision affect serviceability”. Open it, change it, expand it. Our product will be flexible. """ To me the EOMA-68 paradigm sounds like an incredibly good fit. Since it sounds like they are probably still a couple of years away from trying to launch a line of custom laptops. Right now might be the best time to try and bring this project to their attention... heck, if they are curious enough it might even be worth it to send them an A20 CPU card and one of the mini desktops (after they are completed of course). -Mike

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About, the rk processor.
by zap 22 Apr '17

22 Apr '17

something interesting I saw is that in the update picking a processor, it shows rk3188 as the rockchip processor you were going to reverse engineer. on the other hand, your rhombus-tech link shows that your looking at rk3288? Not to be annoying constantly, but I am curious are you looking at one or both? I appolgize if there is something I may have missed.

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Re: [Arm-netbook] Certification Mark: My hat in the Ring
by John Luke Gibson 21 Apr '17

21 Apr '17

Didn't notice that it didn't go through. Here's the attachment.

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System 76 - Entering Phase 3
by Mike Leimon 21 Apr '17

21 Apr '17

Lyberta: > Couple of points that got my attention. They say Linux instead of > GNU/Linux. Open source instead of Free/Libre Software. They also > mentioned Ubuntu. This was enough to me to stop having any respect for > them. At least based on that post. While I understand what you are saying I don't see how having one of the most Linux friendly laptop manufacturers making a laptop based on the EOMA68 standard would be a bad idea. Let's say hypothetically, they decided to make the most awesome modular EOMA68 laptop possible, dual usb-c 3.1 and the works. Even if they did ship the system with a CPU card that was running Ubuntu on it, the whole EOMA68 standard works on the premise that if you can plug it in, it will work. Therefore, couldn't you just swap out out the CPU card and put any other compatible EOMA68 CPU card in there to enjoy the benefits of a well designed laptop and run your preferred distro instead? I understand that Ubuntu isn't your distro of choice (it isn't mine either) however, I think that there aren't many Linux friendly computing companies out there, let alone those that don't sell computers running anything other than Linux. I think that it is certainly important to have principles and to stick to them when possible however, when there seems to be as much common ground between what we want to accomplish and what they want to accomplish I am thinking it might be better to at least try working together than to hunt around for reasons to be divisive. Allan Mwenda: > Well i dunno, system76 would want to make the fastest card not necessarily the freest. I'm not so sure about this. I get the impression from reading some of their blogs and whatnot that they spend quite a bit of time and effort vetting the particular components they are putting into their systems to guarantee compatibility with their Linux distribution of choice. So while I do think they put some degree of importance into making sure that their systems have good performance, I do think they are aware of what having upstream driver support means for system components. I would agree that they would probably want to get the best performance out of a CPU card that they could however, I don't think that they would be too keen to do so at the cost of selecting a chip that didn't have some degree of upstream support. l: > i sort-of thought about this overnight, and i think you're right, > allan. the hardware they're selling is typically mid to high-end x86 > hardware [plus yes they talk about ubuntu] something like EOMA200 > would be a much better bet... but then so would many of the other > (industrial) modular standards for their needs. I suppose I still don't see the harm in bringing the EOMA68 concept up to them. The worst they could say is that they aren't interested. However, they could potentially be a pretty good ally. Also, I did notice that in the past few months they added a 96 core arm server to their lineup: https://system76.com/servers/starling Which means to me that they aren't completely wedded to solely x86 hardware. Even with their tendency to build higher end laptops and systems I think that an EOMA68 based laptop could easily exist within their line-up as an upgradable chromebook alternative (something priced in the $250-500 range). That would allow them to test the EOMA68 waters while at the same time allow them to build on and expand their higher-end line of x86 systems as well. I guess all I am trying to say is, that we won't know what a person or a company will do until we ask the question.

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arm-netbook April 2017