I begun building my own Free Hardware Designs using KICAD
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Still a long way until I will able to build hardware with a Respects Your Freedom Certification[1]. Here are some screenshots:
For hardware that Respects Your Freedom I like the term "Free Hardware" [2], even if it is not yet cerified by the FSF.
[1] https://ryf.fsf.org/
[2] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-hardware-designs.html
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> For hardware that Respects Your Freedom I like the term "Free Hardware" [2], even if it is not yet cerified by the FSF.
The article observes that, even with a free hardware design, users are depending on factories to make the hardware and "this dependence on the factory causes most of the same problems as a nonfree design".
I don't know what kind of hardware you want to design, whether it can be built without a factory.
Anyway, the article you quoted is a great source of inspiration and starting point to see possibilities and issues. I wish you the best, as well as patience and courage as this necessary for success.
There is always things like this:
https://www.olimex.com/Products/OLinuXino/open-source-hardware
The OlinuXino Lime2 runs Trisquel if you put it on there
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> The OlinuXino Lime2 runs Trisquel if you put it on there
Did you manage doing that? How?
On Wed, Aug 09, 2023 at 03:46:28PM +0000, name at domain wrote:
> > The OlinuXino Lime2 runs Trisquel if you put it on there
>
> Did you manage doing that? How?
No I didn't but I am pretty sure you can. Trisquel base is released with the same
architecture. Armhf. You just burn it to a microsd card the little sdcard ones but
you have to make sure you have the bootloader that olimex uses. I was going to
set mine up with Trisquel but my board messed up with the power cable.. i put too
much power to the board (i lost my powercord) now i need a new one to see if i
don't make a liar out of myself. but these boards cost like 75 usd each with no
harddrive; but you can get an HD if you want.
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I have several such boards.
I tried the trisquel netinstaller that was prepared for ARM boards but unfortunately, it does not have support for this board. I guess it is possible to install trisquel manually. I have a clue about what needs to be done, i.e. partition the micro sd card, put the tarball, install a kernel, install U-boot, make the initrd, setup fstab, keyboard, locales and users. However, I am not sure how to do each step exactly, which commands and with what options.
For Debian, I compiled U-boot with modifications because of the ethernet chip issue with my board revision but I don't know whether that U-boot is suitable to directly use to boot trisquel. So there are plenty of details that I am missing. At some point I may try it but it may take a lot of time to find a way that works.
> I guess it is possible to install trisquel manually. I have a clue about what needs to be done, i.e. partition the micro sd card, put the tarball, install a kernel, install U-boot, make the initrd, setup fstab, keyboard, locales and users. However, I am not sure how to do each step exactly, which commands and with what options.
For doing stuff in the new Trisquel filesystem, you might want to do some cross-architecture chrooting. There are multiple ways to do it. E.g.
https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation#Appendix:_chrooting_into_target_file_systems
or
https://proot-me.github.io/#chroot\%20+\%20mount\%20--bind\%20+\%20binfmt_misc\%20equivalent
For other parts, I'd need to make more investigation to come up with specific instructions, sorry :/
Also, I'm pretty sure Debian's U-Boot will work fine with other distros' kernels
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> Also, I'm pretty sure Debian's U-Boot will work fine with other distros' kernels
I understand "install U-boot" as dd-ing u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin. However, is anything else needed?
I mean, I compiled that U-boot with modifications as in https://wiki.debian.org/InstallingDebianOn/Allwinner#Olimex_A20-OLinuXino-LIME2__rev._F_and_newer_and_Debian11.2F_bullseye_kernel. I saw that in some directory in /boot there were dtb files for different boards.
Is the debian dtb file also fine? Does it need some modification for trisquel or for the change that was done when compiling U-boot?
> > Also, I'm pretty sure Debian's U-Boot will work fine with other distros' kernels
>
> I understand "install U-boot" as dd-ing u-boot-sunxi-with-spl.bin. However, is anything else needed?
Probably yes. U-Boot can read configuration from a file named boot.src if it finds one. It might be worth checking if Debian generated such file and whether it needs to be adapted in some way. I cannot give more precise hints because I have myself never used boot.src — I made my RockPro bootable via some bizarre means (involving GRUB2 EFI application being loaded by U-Boot...) that I am now sure are inferior to what Debian does by default.
Also, that Debian Wiki page seems to assume the user wants to overwrite the entire SD card. If you only want to overwrite U-Boot and not the filesystems, add `conv=notrunc` to dd arguments.
Btw, I just stumbled across another howto which might be easier to adapt to Trisquel if you decide to install from scratch
https://linux-sunxi.org/Mainline_Debian_HowTo
> Is the debian dtb file also fine? Does it need some modification for trisquel
> or for the change that was done when compiling U-boot?
Most likely not. Actually, U-Boot — depending on its configuration — can either pass its own, compiled-in dtb to the kernel or load one from file. It is also possible to produce a kernel image with the dtb appended to it.
Based on my limited knowledge, I suspect U-Boot does load the dtb from file in your case. While it'd be good to ultimately install the dtb file from Trisquel, it's probably OK to stay with the Debian's one for now
If I may know, what are the criteria for FSF certification?
On 09/08/2023 19:56, name at domain wrote:
> > For hardware that Respects Your Freedom I like the term "Free
> Hardware" [2], even if it is not yet cerified by the FSF.
>
> The article observes that, even with a free hardware design, users are
> depending on factories to make the hardware and "this dependence on
> the factory causes most of the same problems as a nonfree design".
>
> I don't know what kind of hardware you want to design, whether it can
> be built without a factory.
>
> Anyway, the article you quoted is a great source of inspiration and
> starting point to see possibilities and issues. I wish you the best,
> as well as patience and courage as this necessary for success.
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