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Librem5 Hardware Update

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Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#61

Post by pedrocr »

conradev wrote: post #54
pedrocr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not of course. They just treat the modem as walled off peripheral black box like all the other rest of the hardware. They may load firmware on boot for LTE/Wifi/Bluetooth like most Linux laptops do. Depending on your opinion on the topic that may be free enough or not but it should be safe as none of those can access the CPU/RAM directly.

I see. The question here is not if there will be proprietary software: there will be. The question is which of that proprietary software runs on the CPU. Is the idea that all of the software in the kernel to interface with these devices is open source? I also don’t get the hangup over PCIe (vs USB). DMA with an IOMMU can be made fairly secure (and has obvious perf benefits).

> I see. The question here is not if there will be proprietary software: there will be. The question is which of that proprietary software runs on the CPU.

I'm pretty sure no closed source software runs on the CPU. As for the hardware that depends on your definition. Hardware often has firmware in ROM. That you now feed that firmware on bootup instead of it being in ROM just allows you to update the firmware from the manufacturer. If that's running proprietary software depends on your definition.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#62

Post by newnewpdro »

craftyguy wrote: post #33
newnewpdro wrote: post #30

Why is there a substantial heat sink on what's supposed to be packaged down to the size of a smartphone?

Because it's a platform under active development, and they're probably more concerned with functionality than some super sexy tiny cooling solution? At some point they'll most likely test the production cooling system, but for now it probably doesn't matter. You'd be surprised how many things (cooling, PCBs, etc) are much larger early on than their production counterparts...

So the i.MX 8M SoM package will be smaller and dissipate less heat in the final handset?

I wouldn't expect the same chip going into a smartphone to require a heatsink or any thermal consideration at all on a sparsely populated, open-air circuit board.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#63

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

amelius wrote: post #11

Does it have a hardware switch to turn off the mic and camera?

When you think about it, it amazes me. So many people, including me, would love to have these switches. Like physical switch for the mic, camera and radio. And yet, the companies that are supposed to listen to the customer seem to do exactly the opposite to what the customer wants, like installing all these unremovable crappy apps nobody uses or removeing the headphone jack. Are these people so out of touch with reality?

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#64

Post by eudora »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #63
amelius wrote: post #11

Does it have a hardware switch to turn off the mic and camera?

When you think about it, it amazes me. So many people, including me, would love to have these switches. Like physical switch for the mic, camera and radio. And yet, the companies that are supposed to listen to the customer seem to do exactly the opposite to what the customer wants, like installing all these unremovable crappy apps nobody uses or removeing the headphone jack. Are these people so out of touch with real…

Hold up.

I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches.

Does your mum want a hardware switch? Does the guy working at Starbucks?

I think it might be the techheads who think that installing Linux and having hardware switches are normal - they're the ones who are out of touch with reality.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#65

Post by conradev »

cyphar wrote: post #59
conradev wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. The question here is not if there will be proprietary software: there will be. The question is which of that proprietary software runs on the CPU. Is the idea that all of the software in the kernel to interface with these devices is open source? I also don’t get the hangup over PCIe (vs USB). DMA with an IOMMU can be made fairly secure (and has obvious perf benefits).

I think the main reason is that powering off a device (for their hardware kill switches) connected via USB is more reliable than powering off a device connected via PCIe. There's also just more layers of security when using USB as opposed to a single layer with PCIe (IOMMU -- which is secure as far as I know but I'd prefer to be safe rather than sorry in this case).

That makes sense.

I thought of the kill switch thing after commenting… eGPUs (necessarily) have the ability to be unplugged while running, but I think it was a lot of work on the part of the OSes to make that work well.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#66

Post by fghtr »

rocky1138 wrote: post #48

I don't really have anything of value to add to the conversation, but in case the Librem5 team is here I just wanted to thank you for your work and applaud your openness to the current status of everything. Another project which is taking on a similar challenge and is similarly open is the Dragonbox Pyra.

And one more project is https://neo900.org.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#67

Post by [deleted] »

yogthos wrote: post #21

It’s hard to overstate how important Librem phone is. Currently, it’s pretty much impossible to buy a high end phone that you can actually own. All Android based phones have their firmware locked and root access disabled. This effectively means that you do not own the device, and you don’t get the final say as to what will be running on it. I’m aware that it’s possible to crack the firmware, but I think that’s comple…

[deleted]

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#68

Post by Kenji »

ethbro wrote: post #39
craftyguy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a platform under active development, and they're probably more concerned with functionality than some super sexy tiny cooling solution? At some point they'll most likely test the production cooling system, but for now it probably doesn't matter. You'd be surprised how many things (cooling, PCBs, etc) are much larger early on than their production counterparts...

Software perspective: Fatal error, I'll just make a change and recompile. Hardware perspective: CPU cooked itself because frequency regulation was accidentally turned off, time to wait for new parts from China + assembly. It always amuses me how laisez faire folks are about things like ESD. "It's never caused a problem before" isn't a reason to ignore best practices and not work defensively.

> "It's never caused a problem before" isn't a reason to ignore best practices and not work defensively.

It is if working defensively is costlier than replacing the odd broken part.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#69

Post by amelius »

eudora wrote: post #64
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you think about it, it amazes me. So many people, including me, would love to have these switches. Like physical switch for the mic, camera and radio. And yet, the companies that are supposed to listen to the customer seem to do exactly the opposite to what the customer wants, like installing all these unremovable crappy apps nobody uses or removeing the headphone jack. Are these people so out of touch with real…

Hold up. I don't have stats but I'm incredibly confident that almost no users want hardware switches. Does your mum want a hardware switch? Does the guy working at Starbucks? I think it might be the techheads who think that installing Linux and having hardware switches are normal - they're the ones who are out of touch with reality.

Companies are basically dictating what users "want": from social media to personalized ads.

The problem with regular users is: they don't care until it's too late.

Can we blame them? Not really, because life is too diverse to worry about every consumer product.

It's good, however, if there is a bunch of good guys who do the thinking for these users. Still, most users may not care, but eventually consumer advocacy groups will pick this up, and they will educate users.

Re: Librem5 Hardware Update

#70

Post by arthurfm »

vbezhenar wrote: post #56
floatboth wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can boot, but not install , as Linux won't see the internal storage that's controlled by the T2 chip.

So Linux need some drivers or it's a fundamental restriction from Apple?

Could the "AppleSSD" driver for Windows [1] be reverse engineered?

[1] https://twitter.com/tperfitt/status/1060995265694449664

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