Category: Free Hardware / OpenBios / OpenFirmware / CoreBoot / LibreBoot

some screens: (scroll to the very bottom of this article for wifi card replacement procedure 🙂 pretty cool that it is possible to PERMANENTLY disable Intel ME via BIOS (at least that is what the BIOS promises… better (of course) […]

the repository is here: https://notabug.org/libreboot/libreboot NOTE: LibreBoot (status of 2018) can NOT boot Windows X-D (who cares). So guess one wants to use LibreBoot with GNU Linux only. even when CoreBoot is a 10 year old project… replacing your BIOS […]

this setup is a combination of an offgrid 12v solar system and a 12v pump… i still have to find “the perfect pump”. what 12v pump to use? “Centrifugal pumps in 12v continuous operation have a low voltage and are […]

…and it is even FAST! hardware support: 250 mainboards supported in 2012! Chromebook (IvyBridge / Thinkpad X60 / Thinkpad T 60 It comes with OpenBoot = also good and a direct rival to Intel’s EFI adoption. (checkout: https://www.coreboot.org/, coreboot interview: […]

  one was running CyanogenMod “Beanstalk” on Samsung Galaxy S3 (i9300) for the last 2-3 years and it worked pretty well, but after a while (and a lot of Apps) it becomes unreliable/unstable. (but that is with all systems that […]

Update: 2020.03 “The newly developed Rowhammer- attack TRRespass can crack the RAM-a security mechanism by many DDR4-DRAM-modules as well as LPDDR4 Chips. Until now, these were considered to be almost immune to Rowhammer attacks.” https://www.com-magazin.de/news/sicherheit/software-hammer-ram-schutz-attackiert-2515621.html Update: 2019.10 Zombieload is back. […]

what to do to improve online privacy? use a privacy respecting DNS server by https://www.opennic.org/ for example: 195.10.195.195 (not google’s (8.8.8.8)) use Freifunk use a VPN such as: mullvad VPN https://mullvad.net/en/help/pricing-discounts/ https://mullvad.net/en/check/ Mozilla launched it’s own VPN service https://vpn.mozilla.org/ use tor […]

update: 2022-06 by now under xfce4 (+lightdm + firefox) it can do 720p and 1080p Youtube (see below screenshots and video) with passive cooling ARM CPU getting very hot rendering: 720p Youtube video 70C (158F) 1080p Youtube video 80C (176F) active […]

“You will constantly have to fight for even the most basic of rights – and build your own infrastructure – or your government will spy on you and lobbyists try to take away your freedoms.” Watch this video and this: […]

it is amazing on how many chips linux can run https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch CPUs you probably have NEVER heared of 😀 OpenRISC – Academic and non-commercial use Being open source, OpenRISC has proved popular in academic and hobbyist circles. For example, Stefan […]

uname -a; # tested with Linux debian 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.43-2 (2017-04-30) i686 GNU/Linux su; # become root apt-get update; apt-get install lilo; # install the thing liloconfig; # generate config file /sbin/lilo; # install lilo to mbr enjoy […]

if you want to find out what chipset / mainboard your PC / Laptop / Notebook is using and other details about the hardware. unfortunately this is not a straight forward task… and works better / worse depending on the […]

this script will have to be run as root. it will ask the user, if the user is satisfied with linux running on this hardware, can even give a comment, then it tries to detect the model of one’s motherboard, […]

“The Unix Philosophy in One Lesson” “All the philosophy really boils down to one iron law, the hallowed ‘KISS principle’ of master engineers everywhere:” “Keep It Simple, Stupid” or “Keep It Super Simple” (less offensive) The Unix philosophy emphasizes building […]

Update: 2019.01: Redhat CPU fixes overview: Is CPU microcode available to address CVE-2017-5715 via the microcode_ctl package? https://access.redhat.com/articles/3436091 Update: https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intel-Prozessoren-undokumentierter-Debugging-Zugriff-erforscht-4256525.html update: from FSF: Dana Morgenstein: If there is an event at your university or in your community addressing the Intel chip […]

Unfortunately Debian – and i guess the rest of the Linux world as well – users have a pretty hard time finding WIFI and LAN cards but also grafix cards that can run with 100% free software. (FSF! STALLMAN! HELP! […]

this is a crowd-funding project that still needs funding…. if you can help! please chip in 🙂 https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-1 Tour of LibreCMC and openmediavault We took a screencast of LibreCMC and some screenshots of openmediavault running on the GnuBee Personal Cloud […]

While biodiversity is GOOD and efficiency is NOT all we need. Nature looks for a balance of efficiency (30%) and resilience (70%). Standardization is enshuring that your work is compatible with future versions – therefore important for programmers, administrators and […]

massive amounts of recordings now available for those who did not get a sponsored flight on an hydrogen powered spaceship… 😀 (me). https://media.libreplanet.org/u/libreplanet/tag/libreplanet-2017-video/ libreplanet‘s media with tag libreplanet-2017-video The GNU philosophy: Ethics beyond ethics Algorithmic bias: Where it comes from […]

Hardware Assembly: (i think 512MByte should be enough, 1GByte probably pretty good) Software Installation: including squid-proxy and web advertisement-filtering in the next part: OpenVPN 🙂 Thanks man! Amazing tutorials! by https://internetz.me Related Links: https://www.howtoforge.com/pfsense-squid-squidguard-traffic-shaping-tutorial http://www.shallalist.de/Downloads/shallalist.tar.gz

i would love iceland or any government come forth on that issue – developing and standardizing free hardware (from phones to laptops to 3d printed houses?) for it’s free citizens – without closed-source-binary-blobs and drivers. https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw http://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap_Machines Further hardware resources: […]

while this is not exactly the same as “free hardware”… it is still a step in the right direction. http://www.oshwa.org/ Here is a list of OSHWA approved hardware projects: http://certificate.oshwa.org/certification-directory/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gJHfoIyvU_ZUnMPu5pVvUQTfMr3ObmwplwwQRIbIy9Y/pubhtml/sheet?headers=false&gid=0   1 UID Project Name Brief Project Description Link […]

replicant.us: Samsung Galaxy Qualcomm Modem Backdoor in Software (FSF) “We are also having tough times with GPS: all the GPS chips found in the Android phones we support implement a secret and non-documented protocol that we just cannot figure out.” […]

So it seems pretty hard to find a grafix-card that runs on completely open source and not closed-source drivers. we try never the less we try. Reception and impact https://www.mtu.edu/materials/department/faculty/pearce/ http://www.openhardware.org/ Cover for “Open-Source Lab” by Joshua M. Pearce (2014). […]

It is actually a scandal that the world depends on chips and operating systems – that are designed to do mass-surveillance – it seems – in order to build up a world-wide-dictatorship that no-one can escape… by information and money. […]

it’s so annoying… the brother devices report “toner low” and STOP PRINTING 😀 based on the page-count… not the actual toner-levels. (there used to be “windows” on the side of the toners so you could see (and the device detect) […]

update: 2021-01 “the best (most privacy & security & usability) Smart Phone solution” is yet to be found (PinePhone (yet untested) comes close) and it would be like: runs standard unmodified GNU Linux kernel 100% open source drivers comes with […]