Hi, Le dimanche 09 décembre 2012 à 15:44 +0000, Michael Dorrington a écrit : > Does this project enjoy support from the FSF? >
Yes, provided there is no non-free blobs (as it might be the case for the firmware used for the video acceleration). > Let's discuss and share on this free hardware/software project in the > > Is the Loongson 3A laptop (Yeeloong 8133?) free hardware? > > The last thing I read was interview with RMS where he said that he used > a Yeeloong but specifically that it was *not* the new one [8133] as it > need non-free firmware for the video. These need answering for the 8133: > The radeon/amd graphic chipset requires a non-free firmware in order to enable hardware acceleration. However, the data under "3aXorg" (in [1]) seem interesting. This said, very few people seem to have got their hand on this hardware AND have reported about it (excepting a Gentoo user, see [2]). This may change and result in more first hand reports. Then, one will be able to execute some tests (as in [2]), in order to assess the components, the available firmware and the possible workarounds. Until then, on may consult the few available reports (as in [4] [5]). This said, on the positive side, the manufacturer do provide extensive help with documentation + sources + support. Of course, it's work in progress, but it's a very appreciable factor as hacking the hardware or installing a new distribution is concerned. > 1. A list of all the non-free firmware inside the hardware. > This has to be confirmed on the real hardware (seeing is believing). > 2. Is that non-free firmware inside the hardware currently replaceable > with a free version? > See [1]. > 3. What non-free firmware in software is required to run the hardware? > (Such as, to display on the screen, use an external display or to use > the wired Ethernet.) > > 4. What are the features of the hardware when run with maximum free > software on it? (Such as, does the Ethernet only do 100 Mbps rather > that 1 Gbps, can it still display to an external screen.) > > 5. Is the 8133 a step back in terms of software freedom compared to the > 8101 and 8089? > Not sure about that. However, my intuition is that the hardware running the 3A CPU is a transition announcing a next generation (with the 3B CPU) and more freedom-complient components > 6. Are Lemote going to work to getting any required patches into > upstream? (For instance patches to Xorg? The Xorg patchesi for 8101 and > 8089 are still not in upstream AFAIK and from what I can tell Lemote > didn't try to get them upstream.) > See next generation > People are free to work on what they want but, depending on the answers, > from a software freedom point of view it might be better improving the > software for 8101 and 8089. The performances achieved with the 3A machine may benefit for the actual porting projects targetting the 2F machines. See the GCC compile buildfarm, which provides a remote access to 3A machines ([6]). [1] http://www.loongson.cn/dev/ftp/3aXorg/ [2] http://teknohog.godsong.org/hardware/naga/ [3] http://h-node.org/wiki/page/en/Discover-your-hardware [4] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTI0NzE [5] http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyOTE [6] http://lists.parrot.org/pipermail/parrot-dev/2012-March/006660.html _______________________________________________ gNewSense-dev mailing list gNewSense-dev@nongnu.org https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnewsense-dev