Slashdot Mirror
Open Hardware and Software Laptop
New submitter mihai.todor85 writes "It looks like Andrew 'bunnie' Huang has been quite busy lately, developing a nice open hardware laptop. He was even kind enough to provide all the schematics without NDA. For anybody interested in owning such a device, he says that he 'might be convinced to try a Kickstarter campaign in several months, once the design is stable and tested' if enough people are interested."
bunnie says: December 16, 2012 at 3:20 am
Clarification: Wifi does not require a closed-source blob, if you use an Atheros 9k mPCI-x version. An example card is linked under the mPCIx feature bullet.
The USB card is provided as an option just in case you want to put something else in the mini PCI slot, or you wanted a second wifi interface for some reason. Also, the USB card is much cheaper than the mPCIx card, so it’s a cost-down option for those who don’t care as much about a small blob in the system. Basically, if you care about having no blob for wifi, you can pay for an option that is open source.
GPU, on the other hand, is probably out of reach. nvdia and ATI have set a pretty strong precedent for closed source drivers to use those elements, and the IP vendors for integrated GPUs (like Vivante) are following suit. However, GPU is non-essential IMO for a large application space.
An interesting project, I wish them luck. Even if it is never widely popular in the marketplace, who knows what spinoff projects this might launch?
You sir, are an idiot.
RMS created the free software movement. He is the original author of gcc, emacs, and others. Unless you only use windows (probably the case based on your post), you have benefited from his work. Lots of kids here on /. like to trash talk RMS at every opportunity, but they are either stupid, or ignorant of what the world was like without RMS's free software movement.
No, free software doesn't feed starving babies, but it is the basis of the education of millions. And, many thousands of those millions contribute back-- keeping this movement of sharing knowlege alive-- now across generations.
You. What have you done with your life that makes you think you measure up favorably against someone like RMS who has done so much? Yeah, thought so. Nope, being a pathetic loser troll doesn't give you any bragging rights.
World needs more dedicated folks like RMS (in all fields).
Free software is a very large part of the reason these idiot trolls have the ability to annoy people. They should be thankful. the era of software freedom seems to coming to a close though. Open source has won the battle for the server, but is in a losing battle for the client, with walled gardens springing up all over.
Even if he only uses Windows, he has visited websites running on open-source software, so he benefited from RMS' work.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
It's just a flicker in time like DOS vs Apple ][. HTML5 & the open web is the standard. For example the preferred graphing calculator for many isn't local, but Wolfram Alpha. Then local apps are only a manifest file away, like Firefox OS does.
Sure native's faster, but HTML5's write-once, run-everywhere (a feature no one else can offer now) is big.
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
RMS is not a destination; he is a journey.
and forget digital cameras, USB Sticks/card readers, external HD's.
3 is the magic number, at least for laptops, that permits most reasonable combinations of commonly used devices for most common scenarios.
6 is also nice.
As someone who recently did a bunch of HTML5 code for a multi-platform app, your use of "write-once, run-everywhere" amuses me.
More like "write once, then rewrite once per OS and browser version, avoid any advanced features, and run (almost) everywhere but don't expect it to work or look the same". YMMV.
I want USB 3.14 -- it has rounder cables.
RMS is not a destination; he is a journey.
Actually, RMS is the STARTING POINT of (hopefully) a very llooooooooooonngg journey.
For every inferno, there must first be a spark that started it all.
RMS is _that_ spark.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Would you trust a network card with a Chinese binary blob to run it? My strawman could have a much bigger backdoor than the average blob'ed SSD.
What do you think those Chinese-manufactured chips are if not binary blobs? The fact that the logic isn't loaded by the OS doesn't make a whit of difference.
Yet another open hardware project?
Might he combine resources with Luke Leighton, who as recently as last week was interviewed about a FSF endorsable arch, in addition to his eoma-68 project?
Diversity is good but with economies of scale there's a KDE tablet, Golden Delicious openmoko successor, replicant.us and geeksphone all promising varying degrees of openness but failing to develop much of a market up against the big boys...
RTFA. This guy is making the laptop he wants, the way he wants it.
One of the features: dual ethernet jacks, so he can use the laptop as a packet filter or firewall.
Another one of the features: an analog meter. He's setting it up for software control so it can display battery life, audio peak loudness, or silly things like time of day represented as the position of a single needle.
He doesn't claim anyone else wants one. He did say that if, after he does all the work, there is sufficient interest, that he might do a kickstarter.
I presume this meets with your approval?
My personal itch is that we are at a point where BIOS and firmware can be suspected of hiding some backdoors. Having a verifiable design with 100% of the source of any code running on any chip inside is actually an interesting goal.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
As someone who recently did a bunch of HTML5 code for a multi-platform app, your use of "write-once, run-everywhere" amuses me. More like "write once, then rewrite once per OS and browser version, avoid any advanced features, and run (almost) everywhere but don't expect it to work or look the same". YMMV.
Yep. The same can be said about Java, and I presume, any product that claims to be "write once, run anywhere" -- Write Once Debug Everywhere is more like it, and when I consider that, I might as well be writing cross platform native code which is write once, Debug on 3 to 5 platforms vs write for the web and test on 3 to 5 platforms times three to seven browsers... ~20 testing environments vs ~4.
Or better yet, stick a powered USB hub into the power brick like Lenovo does with one of their power supplies (http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-57Y4600-ThinkPad-65W-Adapter/dp/B0044KR91U) . Sigh. Dammit Lenovo, can you PLEASE make this in 95-watt size? (for those who don't know, 65W is enough to run a Thinkpad OR charge its battery, but not both at once. To charge AND run simultaneously, you need 95w).
Combine a USB3 hub with beefy power brick big enough to supply the laptop itself with 95w so we can use it to power a bright second travel monitor, and there'd be just two words to describe it: Flawless Perfection.
This motherboard has a built-in FPGA, multiple channels of analog/digital I/O, PWM output, Rasp-Pi compatible header (to allow use of R-Pi accessory boards), builtin speaker amp (for small speakers, but still), 3 UARTs, and a USB-OTG port.
This is a hardware hacker's *dream* system.
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/category/web-server-survey/
Dec 2012, 55% of web servers run Apache.
Android is the biggest mobile platform at the moment. It has eclipsed Microsoft in the number of installed systems. Although these typically are not traditional desktop/laptop PC installations, the market seems to be heading more in the direction of Android (and similar systems) than it does towards those 'traditional' PC configurations.
In other words, the biggest platform at the moment is open source. Never mind that are several closed markets which serve this platform, you are not bound to them.
A quick look around the farm here shows that the advent of Android has pushed the last stronghold of closed source - mobile - off the cliff. All our PC's, servers and laptops run Linux in some form or other. All our phones run Android in some form or other. All our tablets run Android in some form or other. There is a television in the house somewhere, served by a DVB-T receiver/decoder. The thing runs Linux. The DSL modem? Linux. The router? Linux (OpenWRT). There is only one remaining 'closed' box attached to the network here: the (HP Laserjet 2200) printer. Guess which of all these devices is the most troublesome?
In contrary to what you state, gaining software freedom has never been as easy as it is now. Even better: it looks like it will become easier still with the advent of open hardware.
--frank[at]unternet.org
free & open-source software existed before RMS
No. Please at least try to educate yourself on the basics.
Before RMS there was no Free Software. There was open source. In fact most software was open. The Free Software movement was started in response to the closing of software. Specifically when a company took a printer driver written by RMS, tweaked it and refused to give him the source.
Free Software as a mechanism to protect user freedom certainly did not exist before RMS created it.
i seem to recall that we got by just fine ...
Yeah, the unix wars were great. I enjoyed them.
Shitty fucking awful terrible proprietary embedded venduh compilers were lovely too.
Of course humans survive. It would be very, very hard to wipeout th human race.
But the world is certainly a better place because of RMS.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
USB won't do things the same way as two hard Ethernet devices would. It'd be close for light-duty things, but at 100Mbit speeds things start faltering because the devices can only sort-of keep up because of USB overheads, etc.
You honestly want both a handful of USB's and two hard NICs if you can get them.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
So much freaking negativity on here about this. I for one think this is a really cool project... and oddly enough actually fits the tagline of "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters".
I have read several pages of comments and so far there have been only a very small handful of positive comments, while I think this is one of the coolest and most exciting things I've seen in a while. If this goes to a Kickstarter campaign then I for one am all over it. The very idea of building a laptop with everything I want and nothing I don't (including R-Pi headers and some really freaking cool ports on the board for getting down-and-dirty with the hardware) just excites me. I want one, and I will not be dissuaded from that opinion. Come on; an integrated FPGA that you can turn to any task you like? How many laptops have that? The PWM headers mean that you can take one of these motherboards and make it the brain of your own robot... an incredibly powerful one compared to most of the hobbyist kit that's out there.
I would ask what happened to the Slashdot that I used to love, but I think I already have a pretty good idea.