Hey there, I'll respond to the various concerns and questions raised in this thread, in no particular order. First off, I'm glad to see such interest for the C201 Libreboot port!
At this point, there are no distributions following the GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG) that support the C201 out of the box. The first problem is that it's an ARM machine, and most GNU FSDG-compliant distributions don't support ARM. Only Parabola has ARM support at this point. Some work would be needed to write up instructions regarding how to install Parabola on the C201. This is something I have been meaning to do, but couldn't find the time to do it yet. However, writing instructions is not all that is required. The device needs a kernel with specific drives for its hardware, that are not integrated into Linus Torvald's version of Linux, the upstream Linux kernel. Instead, CrOS systems use a downstream version of Linux, with changes for hardware support. The source code for it is available as part of the ChromiumOS project and it can be rebuilt from source. Until the upstream kernel is ready, this downstream kernel is the best candidate to get a working free system on the device. One might be concerned about what comes with it, since it is a modified version of the upstream kernel. I am not aware of any addition that would conflict with users' privacy and security, but I have not checked extensively. Note that the firmwares for Wi-Fi are not part of the kernel, but are out of the tree, as far as I recall. Thus, this kernel could be deblobbed and packaged in Parabola, to make the installation easier. Note that the kernel must be wrapped in a particular image format for the Depthcharge payload. This is to allow signature verification, a crucial security feature. I do not intend to support anything else than Depthcharge in Libreboot at this point. Actually, I think it is quite elegant and gets the job done nicely. Regarding my own setup, I have been using the device with Fedora since Debian doesn't ship with llvmpipe (required for decent CPU-based graphics acceleration). Either way, once the kernel is ready, any GNU/Linux system that has ARM support can be used on the device, with little adaptation needed in userspace. I will write up instructions for these systems too, probably on my personal blog. I am not using the internal Wi-Fi chip, that requires a proprietary firmware, but use an ath9k_htc USB dongle instead. I enabled that module when building the kernel and it works normally. Aside from documenting the installation of GNU FSDG-approved systems and others and improving the state of the Libreboot port (especially regarding the support of security features), I'd also like to contribute to C201 support to the upstream Linux kernel. Alas, Libreboot is not the only project I'm contributing to, far from it, and all of that takes time, especially when it all happens on spare time. Cheers! -- Paul Kocialkowski, low-level free software developer on embedded devices Website: https://www.paulk.fr/ Coding blog: https://code.paulk.fr/ Git repositories: https://git.paulk.fr/ https://git.code.paulk.fr/
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