actually Lenovo G505S has more freedom in some relations, if compared to Chromebook R13 : for example, G505S does not require blobs for WiFi and Bluetooth if you replace its' preinstalled Broadcom half size mini PCI-e card with Atheros AR9462 (which has 2.4 GHz + 5 GHz + Bluetooth and is top-of-the-line ath9k card) and its' price is just $8-$10 with free shipping included ;) also there are some great technical opportunities which chromebooks do not have - e.g. you could replace WiFi mini pci-e card with double SATA ports RAID card, or you can install 16 GB of RAM because G505S RAM is not soldered ! Still could get G505S in good condition at many USA / European markets, e.g. yesterday at eBay I saw G505S based at USA which costs just $95, also UK-based in nearly mint condition ;) Also there are a lot of spare parts available, which helps to ensure the long lifetime of this great performance quad core laptop ( Chromebook is not even close at performance, as far as I know )
Best regards, Mike Banon On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 11:03 AM, Paul Kocialkowski <cont...@paulk.fr> wrote: > Hi, > > Le mardi 23 mai 2017 à 08:54 +0200, Paul Menzel a écrit : >> I am looking for a new portable device available in Europe. >> >> Is it true, that the Acer Chromebook R 13 [1], is the only current BLOB >> free device? The device currently costs 400 €. Is MediaTek “a good >> citizen”, that means, do they provide datasheets and work on drivers? > > The Chromebook R13 (elm) is very close to being able to boot without non-free > blobs. The only remaining blobs are the MT8173 PCM firmwares[0] in ARM Trusted > Firmware. I am working hard to liberate them and I'm very confident that it > will > happen pretty soon. > > However, note that the kernel will require blobs for features such as: > * hardware video decoding > * Wi-Fi and bluetooth > * GPU support > > I'm also not sure about the status of the PD (USB type-C controller) chip. It > might also be running a proprietary firmware (maybe someone from the CrOS team > can clarify this). > > Also, note that as usual with laptops, there are lots of other non-free > components around that are preinstalled on the device, such as the webcam > firmware. > > Note that ARMv7 CrOS devices (mainly RK3288 and Tegra K1) can also boot > blobless > and generally require less kernel blobs too. They also have much better > upstream > Linux support than the ARMv8 ones (which are more recent). For instance, I'm > running a mainline kernel on the Tegra K1 nyans, which is quite usable despite > some issues that I have left to fix. There's also a very high chance that the > GPU will work with nouveau and free firmwares eventually (I'll be working with > nouveau developers to try and make this happen). > >> The Samsung Chromebook Plus/Pro with RK3399 [2] are only available in >> the USA, right? > > I am not aware of it being available in Europe. However, if you're fine with a > qwerty layout, they work just as well in Europe ;) > > RK3399 can currently already boot blobless but also requires kernel blobs. > However, it seems that the boot is currently broken with coreboot master and > ToT > depthcharge and vboot (I'll be investigating this soon). > > Also, the Chromebook Plus (kevin) does have a free software PD firmware. > > Finally, note that the Chromebook Pro is an Intel x86 device, so probably not > very interesting given what you're looking for. > > Cheers, > > [0]: > https://github.com/ARM-software/arm-trusted-firmware/blob/master/plat/mediatek/mt8173/drivers/spm/spm_mcdi.c > > -- > Paul Kocialkowski, developer of free digital technology and hardware support > > Website: https://www.paulk.fr/ > Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/ > Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/ > -- > coreboot mailing list: coreboot@coreboot.org > https://mail.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot -- coreboot mailing list: coreboot@coreboot.org https://mail.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot