On 2016-05-21 06:24 AM, Zlatan Todoric wrote:
> Hi friend and Tails folk,
>
>
> On 05/21/2016 11:57 AM, intrigeri wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> [adding Zlatan into the loop, since we know each other and he works
>> it Purism.]
>>
>> BitingBird wrote (20 May 2016 20:54:38 GMT) :
>>> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/librem-11-a-2-in-1-to-protect-your-digital-life#/
>>> It would be interesting to ask them if it works with Tails :)
>
> 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 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.
>
>> Sure!
>>
>> From what I read, this is going to be a x86_64 platform, so in theory
>> Tails should run on it. I already have a Tails booting on a tablet
>> based on Intel BayTrail, so that new one should at least boot as well.
>>
>> Now, the problems I've had last time I played with Tails on tablets
>> were about drivers: except the touchscreen, basically everything else
>> required drivers or firmware that are not in Linux mainline, so it
>> didn't work without patching the kernel a lot (and the source code for
>> the drivers was not always easy to find, if available at all). So my
>> next questions focus on this topic.
>>
>> 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). 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.
There will *never* be free firmware for 3G cellular devices. At least
not in consumer devices as there are major legal issues with it. There
are USB 3G modems which aren't dependent on OS loadable firmware, but
that doesn't mean they do not have firmware.
>
>>
>> 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).
Atheros is not going to release the code for ath10k. I know this because
I worked on getting the code released for ath9k-htc firmware. After a
loss of two key developers inside the company and management changing it
is no longer feasible to get the code. You need both management's
cooperation and the cooperation of developers. Neither are budging.
They're hostile beyond comprehension. They even moved key things out of
the driver and into the firmware so support for things like mesh
networking, packet injection, etc won't be possible.
We're hoping to convince another company to cooperate on 802.11ac. We've
made the right connections, but it'll still take time.
>
>>
>> And one last question: these devices will be UEFI-enabled, right?
>
> Sadly yes. We are still working on making it as Free as we can and of
> course we will not stop working on that part.
>
>>
>> I'm interested in the answers for both the Librem 10 and Librem 11
>> tablets, in case they differ.
>
> Librem11 is basically as Librem laptops just with Intel M CPU (and
> graphics of course but they are similar in benchmark, certainly not of
> interest to Tails) instead of Intel i5 and i7.
>
> Librem10 uses Intel Atom for tablets and has the mobile version of SSD
> (eMMC while Librem11 has the full powered SSD). They all should work
> out of the box with Tails.
>
> Cheers,
>
> zlatan
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