[Dev] Canceling of Parabola ARM

[Josh Branning]

On 23/08/15 14:14, Luke wrote:
> The two test boards provided were Beaglebone and Raspberry Pi. If
> someone is willing to donate a board which is capable of booting without
> blobs this project could be re-launched. I backed my work (e.g.
> mplayer-libre), prior to the git removal.
>
> My current plan is to free several packages on my personal git and wait
> until a board comes along which is cable of running a fully free kernel
> that we can make tests on. Then this could continue at a later date.
>
> If you are willing to donate the All Winner, it may be worth testing.
> Ask Emulatorman if he can share his latest PKGBUILD of linux-libre with
> you. However be aware that if it requires a blob you might be left with
> a non-usable device. Make backups of the current SDCard.
>
> I do not have the full list of blobs, Emulatorman mentioned several in
> the IRC which were required for the two previous boards to operate.
>
>
> On 08/23/2015 07:44 AM, Josh Branning wrote:
>> On 23/08/15 04:47, Michał Masłowski wrote:
>>>> RNC patches which
>>>> are required for the kernel to run on ARM computers
>>>
>>> Not true.
>>>
>>>> You can read more information about blobs on ARM devices here:
>>>> https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers
>>>
>>> We support x86 while many systems there need blobs for optional graphics
>>> acceleration, and nearly all have nonfree boot firmware.
>>>
>>>> These boards, including Raspberry Pi, actually REQUIRE the blobs in
>>>> order to boot. Therefore until a blob-free board is available, we are
>>>> unable to continue our work. This is unfortunate, but the current
>>>> situation of hardware doesn't allow a true GNU/Linux-libre kernel.
>>>
>>> Boards using TI or AllWinner SoCs don't have such blobs.  Please list
>>> specific blobs which are the issue.
>>>
>>> (For AM335x used in BeagleBone Black, there is a small power management
>>> firmware under a nonfree license, but the SoC documentation suggests it
>>> being needed only for suspend to RAM which I don't believe is normally
>>> useful on that board.  Regardless of this, that firmware looks easy to
>>> replace.)
>>
>> +1
>>
>> I have the olinuxino-lime which has a AllWinner A10 chip and it uses
>> u-boot, and framebuffer, so theoretically there would be no blobs. At
>> the moment it runs arch linux arm, but I would prefer parabola.

I have two in-fact, but it may be easier giving a donation for the cost 
of one (can't be bothered to ship it myself). Do you have a donations 
system set up yet?