On Fri, 16 Sep 2016 10:58:10 +0200 (CEST) Maarten van Druten <m.vandru...@smoose.nl> wrote:
I've CC-ed the mailing list again, since the questions and the answers are probably interesting to a broad audience. > I have one other question, what do think what the chances are to get > Libreboot , or maybe an Replicant Desktop port? on this laptop? > > Links: > http://shop.lenovo.com/gb/en/tablets/lenovo/yoga/yoga-book-android/ > > The laptop is shipped with Android 6.0 and the processor is an Intel® > Atom™ x5-Z8550 Processor the bios is unknown, Lenovo sales couldn't > give an answer yet. ================= == Intel Atom: == ================= Since Atom is a marketing term that applies to a very wide range of Intel processors, I have no idea if it's a good laptop freedom wise. If it's recent enough, it probably has have a management engine. This is really problematic, In some aspects, it's even worse than a smartphone with shared memory between the modem and the processor running Android or Replicant. More information on that can be found on Wikipedia. The management engine is a chip that runs only proprietary software, and will refuse to run software not signed by Intel. It usually has access to: - The computer RAM - Some network interfaces (WiFi, Ethernet) It is more privileged than any software running on the x86 processor. It can run several firmwares with different applications inside. One of the applications is AMT. Looking at what AMT can do will give you a taste of what that chip (the management engine) can do. Here's the link about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Active_Management_Technology On recent Intel hardware, this chip is required to boot your computer, and no one found how to deactivate it yet, and, if someone does, the devices that you buy today will probably not be relevant anymore, given the huge amount of work required to do that. On some old laptops supported by libreboot, it can be deactivated. Theses laptops are fast enough for most computing tasks. ======================= == Replicant laptop: == ======================= Most laptops don't have: - A touchscreen - GPS - A data modem - Accelerometers - etc They however usually have: - a mouse - a keyboard - Some network connection (WiFi, Ethernet) Running Replicant on such laptop would not be very convenient. The main uses cases that I see are: - Running Android applications: F-droid has lots of applications that have no desktop counterpart in GNU/Linux. The advantage here is that probably less work is required to port Replicant on common laptops/desktops than finding a way to run Android applications under GNU/Linux, with fully free software. Running directly on the laptop would also offer better performances than using the emulator of the SDK which lacks 3D acceleration. - When writing Android applications, the applications being written need to be tested. Testing on real hardware might be more appealing to students learning how to write Android applications. However if there was a port for x86 laptops, that port would also work in virtual machines with very few effort. Since there is now a way to have virtual machines use the 3D acceleration of the host(with virgl), fully free software, this might be interesting too. That said, laptops with touchscreens, accelerometers, GPS, data modem and so on do exist. Some Lenovo Thinkpad can have all the above. Theses are: - The Lenovo Thinkpad X60 Tablet. - The Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet. The former can have a free software BIOS replacement, I'm unsure of the status of the later in libreboot, but the X200 Tablet is very hard to flash. Some ARM chromebooks also have free bootloaders, and some of the ones that do, also have touchscreens and can be used as a tablet. The "ASUS Chromebook Flip C100 (Veyron_Minnie)" is an example of that. Note that Free software BIOS replacement on x86 and Free software bootloader on ARM are mostly equivalent freedom wise. Common laptops with a touchscreen would also benefit of such port. Port requirements: ------------------ Replicant is being ported to Android 6 by Wolfgang. While doing it he is or will also be also upstreaming the Galaxy S3 (i9300) to Linux. The idea is that Replicant will probably work with upstream kernels with very minor patching. When Replicant 6 will be ready, and when it will work with upstream kernels, it will probably be very easy to port it to some specific ARM laptops such as the Chromebook flip. Some time ago I tried Android x86 on a Lenovo Thinkpad X200 Tablet, and the features commonly found on smartphones such as the touchscreen, the data modem, the GPS weren't working. If all x86 machines were to be targeted at once, a solution should be found to address similar issues. We would then need some way to probe the hardware that is not fully driven by Linux drivers such as the modems or even some touchscreens. This would have to scale well. Using ACPI or at worse /sys/class/dmi/id/ may work. Denis.
pgpCESUo2Pwy5.pgp
Description: OpenPGP digital signature
_______________________________________________ Replicant mailing list Replicant@lists.osuosl.org http://lists.osuosl.org/mailman/listinfo/replicant