On 05/21/2016 12:53 PM, intrigeri wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Zlatan Todoric wrote (21 May 2016 10:24:37 GMT) :
>> Intrigeri being my friend, and Tails being used by Edward Snowden during the
>> whistleblow, I already talked inside company to add it to our offer
> Excellent :)
>
>> but the issue
>> here is that people seem to be usually using tails on USB drive for only live usage.
>> If you can create OEM installation for us, we would be happy to add it to our offer
>> (I already asked Debian to do this and they will provide it). Benefit is that from
>> every Librem sold with Tails, Tails community would get donation from Purism.
> We don't support installing Tails on internal drives, and we actually
> have code in place to ensure that Tails won't load from there
> (https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/#install_permanently): the idea is
> to enable users to _not_ trust whatever may be on the hard disk of the
> machine they're starting Tails on. So an OEM installation on the
> SSD/eMMC isn't an option, I think.
>
> *However*, I see that the Librem tablets will have a microSD card
> reader. Assuming that it's left free, and that the firmware is able to
> boot off a microSD card, then I think that booting Tails on a microSD
> card is the perfect solution, both for users and for you folks: from
> a UX perspective, this allows one to leave the USB port available for
> other use cases; and from your perspective, this allows to ship
> tablets with _both_ Tails and PureOS, thus leaving the choice up to
> the user to pick whichever they need at each boot, all this for a very
> small additional cost :)
Sounds good, I'll be sure to dive a bit deeper into that.
>
> If you want to go this way, we'll need to look into the details
> regarding how to properly install Tails on a microSD card, in a way
> that scales up to many devices. Some problems need to be tackled in
> this area, but nothing impossible.
>
> Now, we do have certain reservations regarding shipping preinstalled
> Tails (https://tails.boum.org/support/faq/#preinstalled), so we would
> need to find a way to communicate clearly to the users 1. who they are
> trusting (or not) when they use the Tails that comes installed on the
> aforementioned microSD card; 2. how to re-install Tails on that
> microSD card, in a way that avoids any such trust issues (we have
> pretty good doc for that). The way I see it, it's a mere matter of
> communication, but other project members might feel differently.
>
> Still, there's the freshness problem given we release every six weeks,
> and I doubt that your supply chain can guarantee that only up-to-date
> Tails are shipped to the user (and even if that was possible, the
> shipping delay can be enough to make it untrue again). Thankfully we
> have quite user-friendly automatic updates, so this problem isn't as
> bad for microSD as it would be for preinstalled DVDs.
We have assembly partner in California where we actually assembly our
products - so I think while we provide them new images, they would be
able to do it (of course they aren't OS people so we would need to teach
them, but nothing impossible).
>
>>> Zlatan, will PureOS for this tablet include any additional driver,
>>> firmware or kernel patch that's not in Debian, e.g. for touchscreen,
>>> sound, backlight, 3G and various sensors?
>> Nope, PureOS is based on Debian testing main and my task was to find hardware that
>> can satisfy that request (even though supply chains like to make mistakes, we would
>> just refuse and continue our research and work on it).
> Sounds good, thanks for clarifying! So yeah, that could be the first
> tablet I see with proper hardware support on Debian and Tails (modulo
> the Wi-Fi issue discussed below). Lovely :)
>
>> Regarding 3G and other
>> cellular things - we made space for them but of course they will not work until FLOSS
>> gets there and than we would be able to enable such things without "forcing" people
>> to buy new devices.
> OK.
>
>>> In particular, the section about "Freed Wireless AC Driver" makes me
>>> wonder: until that driver is freed, how exactly can one use Wi-Fi with
>>> a Librem tablet?
>> The wireless is the same as in laptops, so the connection will be N, thus free
>> driver. Stretch goal is to free AC (ath10k particular here in mind) as N is unstable
>> and not the best (if you move 10m from AP there is a good chance you're loose
>> connection).
> Hmm, OK. That's somewhat suboptimal, even though one may of course
> plug a USB Wi-Fi dongle in (keeping in mind that a tablet with
> a protruding USB device is somewhat less usable). Are 802.11b and
> 802.11g affected by the same stability problem?
Pretty much yes, you can try with different protocols (wireless card
should be able to emit them all except the ac one) but, most users live
happily with their Librem laptops even with this flaky WiFi connection.
Other solution would be to find the guy who worked on ath10k (as he left
company AFAIK) and ask politely to help us on this issue ;). Btw, I have
seen some pretty small WiFi dongles if people have issues with it
(notice we now also offer Librem laptops without wireless card for
people that want airgapped devices).
>
> Cheers,
