Guide?: Remove non-free software from beaglebone black and debian and get usb wifi to work
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I am writing down this post because it took me 2 days to figure it out, maybe it will help someone.
Because trisquel doesn't provide arm images, and because I am not emotionally ready to use parabola or guix in bbb, I have download and use the official Buster Iot image from https://beagleboard.org/latest-images.
- The onboard wireless card is wl1835, which lacks free drivers. So it must be disabled: sudo nano /boot/uEnv.txt --> uncomment disable_uboot_overlay_wireless=1
- install vrms and run it. There is a bunch of non-free firmware. apt-get remove them all. BUT in order to get Atheros 9271 working I needed to install firmware-ath9k-htc (source: https://trisquel.info/gl/forum/atheros-9271-chipset-libre-non-free-debian-why#comment-141928)
- Remove contrib and non-free in /etc/apt/sources.list and comment deb [arch=armhf] http://repos.rcn-ee.com/debian/ buster main. For the latter I do not know if there is non-free software, but removed it anyway.
Optional:
- remove some unwanted (by me) services as described in the comments in https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24643097/remove-beaglebone-black-services-permanently
And now, after two days of agony I am ready to put this thing in my drawer, cause I haven't any use for it...
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Thanks for sharing your experience.
Did you buy the Beaglebone Black by mistake or was it given to you?
I have some experience with the Olimex Olinuxino Lime2 that also can work with only free software. I have the "Pioneer box", a "home server" and two boards with eMMC. At the moment, only my "Pioneer box" is functional. It is based on the image provided by www.freedombox.org which I hope is free software only. I say "hope" because I did not find any clear enough statement on that. At least, non-free and contrib are not in the sources. I had problems sometimes but people were really helpful on the community forum and I learned a lot on how to maintain the system.
With respect to the other boxes, I used Parabola a bit on them, but it is a long story. My plan is to install Parabola again or Guix (I struggled a lot with Parabola but now I have some more experience) but solving my desktop problems is higher priority now.
I can report about Parabola when I try it again. Or Guix maybe. That could also be helpful for the BeagleBone Black (but my boards have no wifi and I would just use a USB wifi dongle if I needed it).
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Hey Avron, I bought it a while back. I didn't even heard of olixulino until you mention it in your post. Raising two kids and having a job is making it difficult for me to find time for guix or parabola, but I have plans (and hopes) to try them in the future.
Thank you for your post.