Re: The future of mobile computing.

[Omar Radwan]

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" <address@hidden> 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.]

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