But still, drivers are the most important part. Nobody would use a laptop nowadays without WiFi, and back then, nobody would use a desktop without Ethernet. And I'm sure that right now, not a lot of people would be willing to use a phone without a WiFi and broadband connection. I think we need to focus on one type of smartphone, anyone, as long as it is a bit recent. And try to reverse engineer all of it's parts and just put GNU/Linux with all the underlying tools, GNOME or something on top of it and make like a caller application in GNOME. And that would be a fully free operating system that can be used in everyday a phone can. On Dec 10, 2014 5:58 AM, "Andrew Roffey" <[email protected]> wrote:
> Omar Radwan wrote: > > Since 1989 till about 2005, desktops where the main computing > > platforms, and from then till about 2010, laptops where the main > > computing platforms. The GNU project and other free software projects > > have been able to maintain a fully free operating system on both > > devices. > > To an extent, but there are some areas that haven't been so successful, > e.g. WiFi, graphics, not sure about printers. > > > > But the problem now it that phones and tablets are taking up massive > > market share from both laptops and desktops. And as of right now, > > there is no way to run a fully free operating system on those > > devices. And that's bad. > > Completely agree. > > > > I was wondering if there is any plan within the GNU project to start > > making GNU phone and tablet compatible. Like all the stuff under the > > hood can be used, the problem is writing free firmware drivers to be > > able to use the device. > > There is Replicant, an Android/CyanogenMod distribution that aims to be > fully free. However, free firmware for some peripherals on most > smartphones is missing, typically for the modem part, which is a > significant setback IMHO. I actually don't know if Replicant loads up a > non-free blob or if the modem is independent of the main CPU. > > AFAIK Replicant doesn't contain much GNU at all, but I don't necessarily > think this is important for providing a free smartphone OS. > > Their website: > http://www.replicant.us/ > > [I'm just a GNU/Linux user, not authoritative on GNU or Replicant.] > > -- > Andrew Roffey http://andrew.roffey.org > [mailto|xmpp]:[email protected] > see website for GPG/OTR pubkeys > >
