[Arm-netbook] Olimex is making an "open-source" laptop...

[Christopher Havel]

http://hackaday.com/2017/02/05/olimex-announces-their-open-source-laptop/

Rip 'em up, Luke... you know you want to... the quotes wouldn't be in the
subject header otherwise...

:P

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Christopher Havel
http://hackaday.com/2017/02/05/olimex-announces-their-open-source-laptop/
Rip 'em up, Luke... you know you want to... the quotes wouldn't be in the
subject header otherwise...

it's ok chris - i know about this one. appreciated you for
mentioning it as this is a list named "arm netbooks" after all.

l.

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[Christopher Havel]

Aren't you often blowing up at Olimex tho...? ;) I just thought this a good
opportunity for more of that. Besides. I brought popcorn.

...sorry, just trying to tease/taunt in a funny-haha way. I'll stop.

My opinion on the subject, for what it's worth: "the perfect is the enemy
of the good". Something from Olimex that's "sorta kinda" open-source, may
not be "pure", but is *considerably* better than say my Thinkpad X220 with
its BIOS whitelist for WiFi cards. I bought a Lenovo WiFi card on eBay a
few days ago... mostly because I'm not convinced that my USB floppy drive
is still in working order and I didn't feel like finding out with a BIOS
flash utility! (Gee whiz, Lenovo, did you HAVE to put the bloody thing
under the palmrest...?!) Not my hardest repair, by far (Mom has an HP
Compaq TC4400... I swear there's no way to remove the keyboard that doesn't
result in breaking the power button bezel in half!) but there's more than a
little room for improvement there. An open source laptop means that I can
provide feedback on that sort of thing and it'll be heard... right? ;)

Basically, I'm saying, it might not be the whole journey to a truly
open-source system -- but it's a step in the right direction and should be
recognized and (to an extent) applauded as such. At least they're /trying/.

Meh. I'm actually making my own little laptop-like contraption -- a
keyboard with a folding screen, basically. I can describe it, if anyone's
at all interested (I'm guessing probably not, which is why I deleted that
part out of this particular message). It's based around a Pi Zero (sorry,
Luke). Building custom computers is fun :D

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
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Post by Christopher Havel
Aren't you often blowing up at Olimex tho...? ;) I just thought this a good
opportunity for more of that. Besides. I brought popcorn.

sorry - i've not been well (for several months) and simply don't have
the time or energy. if people want to fundamentally misunderstand
what it is i'm doing so that they can continue with their unethical
behaviour, they're entirely at liberty to "explore that space".

Post by Christopher Havel
...sorry, just trying to tease/taunt in a funny-haha way. I'll stop.

no problem chris - i'm just too exhausted to do so, i have other priorities.

Post by Christopher Havel
My opinion on the subject, for what it's worth: "the perfect is the enemy of
the good". Something from Olimex that's "sorta kinda" open-source, may not
be "pure", but is considerably better than say my Thinkpad X220 with its
BIOS whitelist for WiFi cards.

... etc. etc. yes.

Post by Christopher Havel
Basically, I'm saying, it might not be the whole journey to a truly
open-source system -- but it's a step in the right direction and should be
recognized and (to an extent) applauded as such. At least they're /trying/.

he's being supported (financially) by people who also don't quite
fully understand the ethical consequences of their decisions and
actions. and that's fine. collectively they're perfectly entitled to
"explore that space".

l.

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[Christopher Havel]

Replying from my phone, in the kitchen trying to troubleshoot a failing
disk drive on my Osborne 1. I hope you feel better soon, Luke, and I
apologize for taunting you while sick. If I'd known...

Whatever you do, don't work yourself to death. That's not cool.

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

---
crowd-funded eco-conscious hardware: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eoma68

Replying from my phone, in the kitchen trying to troubleshoot a failing disk
drive on my Osborne 1.

ooo an osbouuurne. aawesooome

I hope you feel better soon,

that's gonna take a while... and a lot of research. ongoing.

Luke, and I apologize
for taunting you while sick. If I'd known...

... which is why i haven't told anyone: it's been about.... three
years so far, with symptoms dating back over thirty?

Whatever you do, don't work yourself to death. That's not cool.

tell me about it :)

l.

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[Christopher Havel]

Ouch.

Good luck :D

(Off topic, but you seem interested. I'll post this one and then stop
unless there's a lot of engagement.)

I have a diagnosis on the Osborne. It has two full-height 5.25" floppy
drives ("Mommy, what's a hard drive...?") -- this particular example has
one each of the two that Osborne used, Siemens and MPI. The MPI one (a
Model 51) has a defective spindle motor... it spins by hand, but not by
electricity, so I suspect the windings have shorted out inside. As luck
would have it, eBay has exactly one full-height floppy drive, and it's the
exact make and model of the deceased one I have! I'll have to save up a
little and hope it doesn't get bought out from under me... but I might be
able to get it. Time will tell.

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

each of the two that Osborne used, Siemens and MPI. The MPI one (a Model 51)
has a defective spindle motor... it spins by hand, but not by electricity,
so I suspect the windings have shorted out inside.

check the spring-loaded contacts (brushes). you'll probably find
they've worn to nothing over time.

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[Christopher Havel]

I'm not opening that motor. It's older than I am.

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Christopher Havel
I'm not opening that motor. It's older than I am.

that's f*****g funny :)

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[Christopher Havel]

I'm from 1986. It's from 1981 or 1982. Amusingly, the company that made it
is at least slightly local... we're in the same state. /If/ they're still
around. Unfortunately, I don't see model info for the motor proper, and I
really don't fancy replacing it. This is a belt-drive spindle, and I'm
really not interested in surgery on that level if I can at all avoid it.

A pity I can't get a loan from somewhere to cover the cost of the
replacement drive. I'd buy it right now if I had the money... but I don't :(

[Paul Boddie]

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton

Post by Christopher Havel
Basically, I'm saying, it might not be the whole journey to a truly
open-source system -- but it's a step in the right direction and should
be recognized and (to an extent) applauded as such. At least they're
/trying/.

he's being supported (financially) by people who also don't quite
fully understand the ethical consequences of their decisions and
actions. and that's fine. collectively they're perfectly entitled to
"explore that space".

I actually thought I'd ask about the software in the comments on their blog
post:

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source-
hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/#comment-24787

I'm guessing that Thomas, the guy responding, might be the guy from Free
Electrons, but maybe it isn't. Nevertheless, he seems knowledgeable about the
state of play with the A64. (Not that you'd get a particularly coherent
message by looking at the linux-sunxi wiki.)

I guess that the sticking point is arguably the "software isn't our problem"
attitude, which allows people to claim that something is "open source" (or
"software hacker's [sic] friendly" in this case) and then retreat from
substantiating the claim. It will be interesting to see if Olimex supplies SD
cards with images on them and what kind of source code you can get. They
appear to provide such cards for their other products.

Given the post-sales problems with various SoCs and boards, actually
delivering a top-to-bottom Free Software distribution should be the minimum
just to demonstrate any particular device's credentials in the "openness"
department. That's not just an ideological requirement but very much a
practical one: no-one wants to have to troubleshoot, say, an overheating
system because the software support involves proprietary pixie dust that may
or may not be available.

Anyway, look after yourself out there, Luke!

Paul

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[Allan Mwenda]

Lol proprietary pixie dust. Give that man an internet hug.

Post by Christopher Havel

On Sun, Feb 5, 2017 at 7:11 PM, Christopher Havel

Post by Christopher Havel
Basically, I'm saying, it might not be the whole journey to a truly
open-source system -- but it's a step in the right direction and

should

Post by Christopher Havel
be recognized and (to an extent) applauded as such. At least

they're

Post by Christopher Havel
/trying/.

he's being supported (financially) by people who also don't quite
fully understand the ethical consequences of their decisions and
actions. and that's fine. collectively they're perfectly entitled

to

"explore that space".

I actually thought I'd ask about the software in the comments on their blog
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source-
hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/#comment-24787
I'm guessing that Thomas, the guy responding, might be the guy from Free
Electrons, but maybe it isn't. Nevertheless, he seems knowledgeable about the
state of play with the A64. (Not that you'd get a particularly coherent
message by looking at the linux-sunxi wiki.)
I guess that the sticking point is arguably the "software isn't our problem"
attitude, which allows people to claim that something is "open source" (or
"software hacker's [sic] friendly" in this case) and then retreat from
substantiating the claim. It will be interesting to see if Olimex supplies SD
cards with images on them and what kind of source code you can get. They
appear to provide such cards for their other products.
Given the post-sales problems with various SoCs and boards, actually
delivering a top-to-bottom Free Software distribution should be the minimum
just to demonstrate any particular device's credentials in the
"openness"
department. That's not just an ideological requirement but very much a
practical one: no-one wants to have to troubleshoot, say, an
overheating
system because the software support involves proprietary pixie dust that may
or may not be available.
Anyway, look after yourself out there, Luke!
Paul
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[Stefan Monnier]

Post by Paul Boddie
Given the post-sales problems with various SoCs and boards, actually
delivering a top-to-bottom Free Software distribution should be the minimum
just to demonstrate any particular device's credentials in the "openness"
department. That's not just an ideological requirement but very much a
practical one: no-one wants to have to troubleshoot, say, an overheating
system because the software support involves proprietary pixie dust that may
or may not be available.

Not only that: if the machine doesn't run a vanilla Linux kernel,
there's a terribly good chance that 3 years down the road, you'll still
be stuck with the same outdated kernel.


Stefan


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[Jonathan Frederickson]

Post by Stefan Monnier
Not only that: if the machine doesn't run a vanilla Linux kernel,
there's a terribly good chance that 3 years down the road, you'll still
be stuck with the same outdated kernel.

Aye, that's my biggest issue with most of these little ARM devices.
They don't have mainline support, so try running a device from 3 years
ago and you'll find that it's already outdated. Why is that a problem?
Well just take a look at the CVE list...

The A20 card should hopefully be a welcome relief from this insanity:
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianKernel/ARMMP

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[Paul Boddie]

Post by Stefan Monnier
Not only that: if the machine doesn't run a vanilla Linux kernel,
there's a terribly good chance that 3 years down the road, you'll still
be stuck with the same outdated kernel.

Right. Even when vendors actually release the corresponding source code and
don't drop in binary blobs, due to the phenomenon I call "the Linux
speedboat", if they've forked an old kernel and done things their way, and if
someone doesn't get on the case immediately, there's the unenviable task of
forward-porting that code to whatever it is that the Linux kernel developers
happen to like today. If the vendor didn't manage to throw their code aboard
the speedboat at the right time, everyone is left floating in the wake.

An example of this that Luke mentioned before was the Skytone Alpha netbook
which has an Ingenic SoC that just happens to be the one that there really is
no documentation for, although assumptions can be made that it is similar to
others that are documented publicly. You can get the sense of how things are
by going through the sources for the shipped *2.6* kernel derivative, but it's
an exercise in itself to figure out how all that should be redone for today's
kernels.

Maybe such forward-porting is not too hard: I actually had a go, not being a
kernel hacker, but I didn't sense any genuine interest from anyone who might
be better equipped to help such work along. Shinier things take precedence
over sustainability and longevity for such people, I guess. Add in weird
bootloader and kernel init tricks and you have to be fond of kernel hacking to
be bothered. Plus, I don't really see Linux-the-kernel as the future, anyway.

Paul

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[Matt Campbell]

Post by Paul Boddie
Plus, I don't really see Linux-the-kernel as the future, anyway.

Why not? It has such momentum now; it would be a lot of work to port all
the drivers to anything else.

Matt

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[Paul Boddie]

Post by Matt Campbell

Post by Paul Boddie
Plus, I don't really see Linux-the-kernel as the future, anyway.

Why not? It has such momentum now; it would be a lot of work to port all
the drivers to anything else.

There's so much hardware and software churn these days that the driver
availability argument probably isn't as important as it once was. So much
stuff is probably being done for individual products that people are
undoubtedly having to write code for new hardware, anyway. I guess Linux still
has the advantages of being something people know and having driver frameworks
that people can use.

However, various driver frameworks inside Linux seem to have changed over the
years, hopefully for the better, meaning that unless the drivers of interest
are on the speedboat (and maybe they were but fell off the back at some
point), they're unusable now. Linux doesn't have a monopoly on such
frameworks, though: there's nothing to stop other solutions offering something
much better.

Meanwhile, all the bravado about monolithic kernels being best and there being
no tolerance for any performance decrease whatsoever (not even 15% or whatever
the number was) seems absurd in this age of endless exploits and after-the-
fact mitigations, with a lot of Linux deployments being done on top of
microkernels/hypervisors now, anyway.

Paul

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

Post by Paul Boddie
Meanwhile, all the bravado about monolithic kernels being best and there being
no tolerance for any performance decrease whatsoever (not even 15% or whatever
the number was) seems absurd in this age of endless exploits and after-the-
fact mitigations, with a lot of Linux deployments being done on top of
microkernels/hypervisors now, anyway.

i reaally wish that linus torvalds wasn't such a fuckwit about
microkernels (L4Ka) and device-driver projects such as OSKit.

the linux kernel *really* should be the linux kernel i.e. the source
code that's *IN* the kernel/src subdirectory of what's in the linux
source tree and presently incorporates millions of lines of *driver*
source code.

if the device drivers were actually split into their *own* project, a
different attitude would be had towards l4ka, oskit and projects like
it. u-boot, which has to *constantly* steal code (maintaining it
utterly separately) from the linux source tree, could just use oskit
or an oskit-like derivative instead. the l4ka project could maintain
a SMALL tree of source code instead of having to forward-port its
patches year after year (for about a decade so far) because linus's
attitude is summarised as "go fuck yourself" if anyone mentions
"microkernels" on the linux kernel mailing list.

there would also stand a high probability that the core would remain
stable, making it much easier to drop different device-driver flavours
on top, and that research project for
"real-time-non-shutdown-upgrading-of-drivers" would actually stand a
chance of being incorporated mainline as a result.

instead we have efforts like devicetree which have completely failed
in their goals of stopping device driver proliferation. with nobody
stepping up to unequivocably state that a dtb file is a GUARANTEED
fixed device configuration that will, in 25 years, be GUARANTEED to
work with a future updated linux kernel source file, all that's
happened is that the device driver proliferation problem has moved
from c and h files to .dts and dtsi files.

the one upside of dtb files however is a patch (yet to be
incorporated) which allows dynamic runtime patching of devicetree to
switch in completely new hardware with utterly different
specifications.

anyway.

'nuff.

and yes, we have the problem that the EOMA68-A20 has to be released
with the sunxi 3.4 kernel because it's the only one that supports all
the hardware out-of-the-box.

l.

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[Jonathan Frederickson]

Post by Paul Boddie
There's so much hardware and software churn these days that the driver
availability argument probably isn't as important as it once was. So much
stuff is probably being done for individual products that people are
undoubtedly having to write code for new hardware, anyway.

Sure, but is that a result of the hardware actually being that
different or is it just because manufacturers aren't actually
upstreaming their code? In the latter case, everyone would have to
keep rewriting driver code, but not because it doesn't already exist -
just because they can't cooperate.

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[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

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On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 4:01 PM, Jonathan Frederickson

Post by Jonathan Frederickson

Post by Paul Boddie
There's so much hardware and software churn these days that the driver
availability argument probably isn't as important as it once was. So much
stuff is probably being done for individual products that people are
undoubtedly having to write code for new hardware, anyway.

Sure, but is that a result of the hardware actually being that
different or is it just because manufacturers aren't actually
upstreaming their code? In the latter case, everyone would have to
keep rewriting driver code, but not because it doesn't already exist -
just because they can't cooperate.

it's a byproduct of the N (designs) times M (processors) problem.
Fabless Semi A flatly refuses to mainline their kernel because it
costs them too much time and money to do so, passes it OEM B who just
compiles it maybe makes a few (GPL-violating modifications) and chucks
product out the door.

so we have A muppets chucking out M processors for which there are B
dumbasses times N throw-away products and we as software libre
developers are left utterly gobsmacked by the dog's dinner mess but
also hardly surprised when surveys like this turn out a 98%
copyright-violating rate:

https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/8991.html
http://mjg59.livejournal.com/132339.html
http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/android_tablets/

the whole reason, then (or one of the whole reasons) why the EOMA68
project exists as far as the linux kernel and software libre
compliance is concerned is that it INCENTIVISES collaboration and
cooperation between N designers of Cards ***PLUS*** M designers of
products-compatible-with-cards.

note that's N *PLUS* M products ***NOT*** N **TIMES** M products.

this is utterly crucial and it's an entirely deliberate strategy.

l.

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[Paul Boddie]

Post by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton
On Tue, Feb 7, 2017 at 4:01 PM, Jonathan Frederickson

Post by Jonathan Frederickson
Sure, but is that a result of the hardware actually being that
different or is it just because manufacturers aren't actually
upstreaming their code? In the latter case, everyone would have to
keep rewriting driver code, but not because it doesn't already exist -
just because they can't cooperate.

it's a byproduct of the N (designs) times M (processors) problem.
Fabless Semi A flatly refuses to mainline their kernel because it
costs them too much time and money to do so, passes it OEM B who just
compiles it maybe makes a few (GPL-violating modifications) and chucks
product out the door.

Interestingly, although Ingenic (mentioned earlier) have always seemed to
target older kernels - you can't really blame them if it's what their
engineers know, they can get stuff out the door easily, and the Linux
speedboat is not exactly their fault, anyway - at least they released all the
code, and the various jz47xx SoCs appear to be supported pretty well in the
mainline, thanks to various people forward-porting those code drops.

(I recently promised to test mainline kernels on the Ben NanoNote, and I
mustn't forget to get back to that.)

So although there's limited libre operating system distribution support for
those SoCs, mostly because of a lack of commitment from those distributions,
fuelled by a perceived lack of available hardware to build them natively, the
kernel support is probably pretty good. Of course, you can't guarantee that
stuff won't be thrown out of the speedboat, but the situation has been
surprisingly good for a couple of years at least, I'd say.

Paul

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[Hendrik Boom]

Post by Paul Boddie
Meanwhile, all the bravado about monolithic kernels being best and there
being no tolerance for any performance decrease whatsoever (not even 15%
or whatever the number was) seems absurd in this age of endless exploits
and after-the- fact mitigations, with a lot of Linux deployments being
done on top of microkernels/hypervisors now, anyway.

Are we waiting for the Hurd?

-- hendrik


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[Paul Boddie]

Post by Hendrik Boom
Are we waiting for the Hurd?

I don't know what level you're aiming for with that question, but the Hurd is
available today. However, as I noted, a lot of deployments of Linux are being
done in microkernel/hypervisor environments, so nobody is waiting for
anything, really.

Paul

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[Paul Boddie]

Post by Paul Boddie
I actually thought I'd ask about the software in the comments on their blog
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source-
hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/#comment-24787

There's more about the software in the update about the laptop from after
FOSDEM:

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/fosdem-and-teres-i-update/

"For the moment the only working Linux Kernel which supports all A64 features
is the Allwinner Android Kernel. This Kernel is full of binary blobs, but the
only one which could be used for demo. Beside the binary blobs many other
things are broken, like the power management, different drivers like the LCD
backlight PWM, wake up from suspend, eDP converter is not set properly and
works just in 15 bit color mode etc etc. We have the hardware for 50 laptops
ready (developer edition), but we do not want to ship before we take care for
the software. At other hand we do not want to ship TERES I with Android or
RemixOS also which are complete with binary blobs and will never be Open
Source."

So the story is a bit different from the answer I got before, which was here:

https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source-
hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/#comment-24795

"You can look at the Linux build scripts at Github and address your software
related questions to Linux-Sunxi developers who work on Allwinner devices
Linux support, as we are not experts in this field. To the best of my
knowledge If you need video with hardware acceleration binary blobs are
unavoidable for the moment with A64, but otherwise all other hardware features
have sources with no blobs."

Maybe they realised that people will be very upset if they have some weird,
GPL-violating vendor distro on their new purchase. Meanwhile, on discussions
about alternative SoCs, the EOMA68 campaign update describing the different
SoC choices got a mention. Since Olimex already make Rockchip-based products,
it surprises me slightly that they aren't pursuing that route as well (or
instead).

Paul

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