[Trisquel-devel] Trisquel on ARM cubieboard?

[Quiliro Ordóñez]

El 24/01/13 03:39, Tomasz Jadowski escribió:
> Hi,
>
> I have one of CubieBoard http://cubieboard.org - a small computer like
> Rasberry Pi and I'm thinking it is open, free hardware? Anyone know it?

- Does the boot process of the Cubieboard involve any closed-source
firmware or software? (For example, in the Raspberry Pi, the first stage
bootloader is a large impossible-to-audit closed-source binary that runs
on the GPU.)

No. Cubieboard has open source bootloader, native u-boot spport, both
u-boot-spl and u-boot.

- Aside from hardware video rendering and 3D graphics, can the
Cubieboard be used at its fullest potential (including non-accelerated
video output) without any closed-source firmware or software? If not,
what parts require such closed-source firmware or software?

Yes, everything is open source except the hardware decoder and the 3D
gpu, and the this RE of these are listed as the high priority project of
FSF.
http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/reverse-engineering

- Does the documentation cover the hardware well enough to allow the
writing of alternative homebrew toy operating systems?
Yes, we have A10 manual available, which has register guide.

Copied from http://cubieboard.org/about/#comment-1252


Note: Open hardware is not the same as hardware that works with libre
(free as in freedom) software. Free hardware is something even different.

> How I can check it?

You would have to make your own distro.

> And if is open hardware can I ported Trisquel on it? How?

You will have to use a distro that is ported to A10 processor. Then you
will have to clean it off for non-free software.

-- 
Saludos libres,

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