This is a chromebook, using the Rockchip RK3288 SoC. It uses an ARM CPU, and has free EC firmware (unlike some other laptops). More RK3288-based laptops will be added to libreboot at a later date.
NOTE: This board is unsupported in libreboot 20150518. To use it in libreboot, for now, you must build for it from source using the libreboot git repository.
More info will be added later.
Flashing instructions can be found at ../install/index.html#flashrom
It's next to the flash chip. Unscrew it, and the flash chip is read-write. Screw it back in, and the flash chip is read-only. It's called the screw.
The lima driver source code for the onboard Mali GPU is not released. The developer withheld it for personal reasons. Until that is released, the only way to use video on this laptop is to not have video acceleration, by making sure not to install the relevant blob. Most tasks can still be performed without video acceleration, without any noticeable performance penalty.
In practise, this means that certain things like games, blender and GNOME shell (or other fancy desktops) won't work well. The libreboot project recommends a lightweight desktop which does not need video acceleration, such as LXDE.
These laptops have non-removeable (soldered on) WiFi chips, which require non-free firmware in the Linux kernel in order to work.
The libreboot project recommends that you use an external USB wifi dongle that works with free software. See index.html#recommended_wifi.
There are 2 companies (endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, under their Respects your Freedom guidelines, that sell USB WiFi dongles guaranteed to work with free software (i.e. linux-libre kernel):
These wifi dongles are the Unex DNUA-93F, which uses the AR9271 (atheros) chipset, supported by the free ath9k_htc driver in the Linux kernel. They work in linux-libre too.
It's possible on coreboot systems to permanently disable (break) hardware, by modifying the devicetree accordingly. The devicetree is a part of the coreboot source for any system, that defines which hardware exists in the system. There are usually other ways too.
TODO for the libreboot project: *break* the onboard wifi chip, by patching coreboot-libre to render the built-in WiFi unusable. This will lessen the temptation for users to use it.
It's free software. Google provides the source. Build scripts will be added later, with EC sources provided in libreboot, and builds of the EC firmware.
This is unlike the other current libreboot laptops (Intel based). In practise, you can (if you do without the video/wifi blobs) be more free when using one of these laptops.
This laptop comes preinstalled (from the factory) with Google ChromeOS. This is a GNU/Linux distribution, but it's not general purpose and it comes with proprietary software. It's designed for SaaSS. Libreboot recommends that all users of this laptop replace it with another distribution.
The FSF has a list of distributions that are 100% free software. None of these are confirmed to work on ARM chromebooks yet. Parabola looks hopeful: https://www.parabola.nu/news/parabola-supports-armv7/
The libreboot project would like to see all FSF-endorsed distro projects port to these laptops. This includes Trisquel, GuixSD and others. And ProteanOS. Maybe even LibreCMC. The more the merrier. We need them, badly.
There are some other distributions, which are not freedom-friendly, but can be with some tweaking.
There isn't much choice, but we can recommend these distributions for the time being:
The FSF details the problems with Debian: https://www.gnu.org/distros/common-distros.html#Debian
You can actually run Debian without any proprietary software. The default installation comes without any proprietary software, and although the project does have proprietary software, its only in a separate repository which isn't enabled by default. The Debian project has a strict policy of keeping proprietary software out of the main repository, and moving it to a separate repository; this repository is called non-free, with supplementary packages that require it in contrib, also not enabled by default. If you install Debian and replace the kernel with linux-libre, you can be reasonably certain not to install any proprietary software. However, make sure to exercise caution, since this isn't endorsed at all, and mistakes can happen.
Note that this does not mean Debian is ok! Far from it! Institutionally, Debian is rotten because it distributes proprietary software, even if it's optional and not included by default.
Unlike Debian, Fedora (to the best of our knowledge) only distributes proprietary software in the form of firmware blobs for the Linux kernel. There are repositories for Fedora that contain proprietary software, but none of these are official and have to be added. So just don't add them. Then, delete linux and replace it with linux-libre.
Note that this does not mean Fedora is ok! Far from it! Institutionally, Fedora is rotten because it distributes proprietary software, even if it's easy to remove.
As soon as possible, the libreboot project would like to remove mention of Fedora and Debian. We find such distributions ethically repugnant.
These systems do not use the GRUB payload. Instead, they use a payload called depthcharge, which is common on Chromebooks.
Copyright © 2015 Francis Rowe <info@gluglug.org.uk>
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