Trisquel on the Raspberry Pi

I don't know much about the Rasberry PI beyond what I have read in the news although one thing that concerned me is its dependence on a non-free driver for its graphics chipset. This means that Trisquel and other free software won't be able to take advantage of its most interesting features. Like HD video decoding.

What else is curious is that someone associated with the project is going to be at Libre Planet. I'm not sure what they have to say in regards to this issue although I'm hoping to find out some good news. That is I'd like to hear they have gotten the company with the rights behind it to release a free software driver. I'm not sure how likely this is though.

I think the chipset it is using is a Power VR derived / variant / version which the free software foundation has as a priority project on. If I recall correctly that chipset is sold by Intel and designed by a third party. Intel licensed it and doesn't have the ability to release the code. I know in some cases companies can't even reveal who they licensed the technology from which makes it nearly impossible to get free drivers/firmware/specs.

Thanks for the insight Chris, that a real shame. It looks like a really neat little device. Hopefully there is an alternative solution. I am not 100% worried about the HD graphics, I would probably mostly use it to play around and do minor web browsing, text editing, coding, etc..

There's a similar device which strives to be free hardware too. It's called Allwinner A10. See http://rhombus-tech.net/allwinner_a10/

Can it be used in text-only mode with a 100% free distribution? If so, it will still be very useful.

I'll also look into the Allwinner above.

I will also note the future plans of the developer at LibrePlanet. It's safe to say that the developer must be looking for some method of making it 100% free or else I would expect that they would avoid LibrePlanet.