Does anyone know if Gentoo will be supporting this phone?

monkeygirl · n00b Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 69

https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

It says that it will run using PureOS, but states "Runs PureOS by default, can run most GNU+Linux distributions"

It looks like they're going to make their goal and I've pre-ordered a phone, but I'm not a fan of Debian distros and would prefer to have a Gentoo phone.

Because they are just fund raising right now, I'm not sure if Gentoo (or any other distros) are even considering this, but would a Gentoo phone be something that the Gentoo team would support? Please advise. Thanks!

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 8:10 pm Post subject:

Exactly, it's vaporware right now.

The support ultimately depends on whether the "phone" software is also OSS, including the driver stack.

A lot of attempts of OSS phones have come and gone, I'm not sure what makes this different...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

monkeygirl · n00b Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 69

Cheers. I didn't realise there was a history of these beyond the Ubuntu phone that crashed and burnt.

Has Gentoo ever supported phoneware? If not, then I'm guessing I'm SoL even if this project is realised. : (

I will probably end up using ArchLinux, but I haven't used that distro before--I've heard it was GentooLite. Is this true?

eccerr0r · Posted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 9:00 pm Post subject:

I think the major problem is that the people making these phones don't really have an upgrade plan. They just get the phone out, run out of money, and the next ifone comes out with feature X and now people drop these old phones. Or they don't get off the ground before the ifone comes out with feature Y.

A lot of people come to expect using goofull play or itunedout to get applications too in terms of applications for a form factor like this. Plus the issue that most Linux applications were simply not made for touch, almost requiring a keyboard. (Gnome 3 seems like it's trying to be touch friendly, which implies that it really doesn't want to be non-systemd friendly.)

I don't know if there are any true OSS phone applications that can communicate with the GSM chip to make a call. Plus likely there are no standards so it's like a one-off thing and the Gentoo devs won't stick into the main Portage tree because of that.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

Ant P. · Watchman Joined: 18 Apr 2009 Posts: 6920

A better question to ask is "does this phone support Linux?" — are the hardware vendors involved (ARM, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Imgtec, nVidia etc.) actively antagonistic toward open source? 99/100 times the answer is yes to the latter, which means no to the former. You'll be lucky if you get a massive code dump thrown over the wall which only works with one specific, ancient kernel. Usually you just get blobs.

Never buy hardware like this based on a promise, wait to see if they broke the promise first.

monkeygirl · n00b Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 69

@ant.p - I don't think there is a question of Linux support, as it's advertised to already support multiple Debian-derived distros. Also, I found out about the project from the KDE homepage as they are working on the mobile desktop for this phone. Without being ironic: 'seems legit'

My original question is related to their claim that any OS can run on the phone, most of the time when hardware company's say this--it translates to drivers and software pre-packaged in yum and apt-get repositories. I would prefer Gentoo to any other OS, but I reckon from the replies there won't be even a chance of having a Gentoo phone. (Edit: I'm still looking forward to the phone itself... the idea of an Android/iOS-less phone is exciting)

Thanks for your replies. I'm spinning up the Arch distro to see what it's like.

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

monkeygirl · n00b Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 69

Because the phone says it supports the Arch OS and to the best of my knowledge, Arch is not Debian-based. I heard it was like GentooLite? I just want to test it out on a VM and see what I can do with it. It's all binary, but it has a lot of configuration options.

eccerr0r · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 3:52 am Post subject:

I don't see why it can't run Gentoo if any other OSS OS could run, it's just a matter of getting the (currently nonexistent) drivers ported over and have someone willing to maintain it - if it's uglynasty (like binary blobs, possibly mandated by the SOC manufacturer "because" of FCC rules or otherwise - damn the chip designers trying to use the FCC as a reason to not publish source, and instead design the hardware such that they don't need to conflict with FCC rules) then the chances become less likely. This is the biggest unknown and we won't know until real hardware gets shipping...
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Cyker · Veteran Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 1746

I'm curious as to the logistics of this... Will it have a bootable microSD card or some such like a RPi?
The idea of trying to install a stage3 and then compile my way up on a tiny phone screen on a device with a small CPU and not much RAM sounds quite painful to me... Does it have a USB socket for a keyboard??

Maybe you'd need some sort of cross-compiler setup...

asturm · Developer Joined: 05 Apr 2007 Posts: 8935

Binhost.

Naib · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 9:50 am Post subject:

"Does anyone know if Gentoo will be supporting this phone?"

Wrong question. The question should be... Will this phone be linux friendly. As long as the drivers exist, as long as there is means to access the mass-storage then its a case of someone creating a stage3 or going for a stage1 with a suitable toolchain
_________________

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 9:55 am Post subject:

monkeygirl,

The CPU in the Raspberry Pi was devised for a low end smartphone. It runs gentoo.
The Pi 3 even runs 64 bit Gentoo.

There are two ways people run Gentoo on their phones. As a chroot/prefix, where Gentoo does not do any of the phone management.
That stays with the original phone software.

Then there is where the phone boots into Gentoo and gentoo does everything. That's hard.
It depends on the hardware device drivers being available in a form that you can use them.
Unfortunately, they are often hamstrung by NDAs and tied to old kernels as they are only available as binary blobs.

There is also the regulatory issue around control of the transmitters. Not just the 4G or whatever, the bluetooth, wifi and NFC.
Certification is often tied to drivers. If you are going to use different drivers, the certification may be invalidated.
You do not want to get involved in that.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

R0b0t1 · Apprentice Joined: 05 Jun 2008 Posts: 264

Hello friends,

monkeygirl · n00b Joined: 08 Feb 2004 Posts: 69

Thanks you guys for all your replies.

John R. Graham · Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:18 am Post subject:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:31 am Post subject:

monkeygirl,

Read my link. Gentoo already has the prefix/chroot working on a number of phones.
You don't need a new one,

R0b0t1,

That Certification was paraphrasing the kernel wiki. It had a section on certification.
Most drivers allow you to change Tx power and available channels, so that they can work globally.
e.g in most of the world, the 2.4G channel 14 is not available.
In Japan, only channel 14 is used.

Changing these parameters deliberately, or choosing another region, is an you say, a user problem.
Doing it accidentally, when you configure your kernel is a much bigger issue.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

R0b0t1 · Apprentice Joined: 05 Jun 2008 Posts: 264

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:03 pm Post subject:

R0b0t1,

That's exactly the discussion wireless.kernel.org, which seem to me blank for me, however, the wayback machine has the page. Again, from the wayback machine, this page is worth reading.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

eccerr0r · Posted: Wed Oct 04, 2017 8:19 pm Post subject:

The FCC rules wants whatever box you SELL to not be USER changeable outside the parameters that you brought in to do testing upon.
This puts the burden on the seller to ensure that the end user cannot use the equipment to interfere with other legal use of the airwaves.

The FCC will not bar the seller from selling stuff that the end user can take a solder iron and change things as there are a lot of grandfathered exceptions out there - namely analog transmitting equipment. But they do care if you can change the code with a few keyboard presses or mouse clicks and no additional equipment to change it out of the configuration they tested. This is the difference; but yes, someone has to complain. The unfortunate problem is if someone starts using a band or power that's outside of FCC regulations, and then someone later tries to use that band that was legally permitted by the FCC and find it doesn't work, that person might go and blame the manufacturer that they sold them defective equipment when it was actually the equipment tweaker that was causing the issue. Complete mess.

The airwaves is a limited resource even if it seems unlimited to yourself. Without the FCC we'd have a tragedy of the commons situation and our cell phones would require huge batteries to overpower any other competing "noise" (both true interference and other peoples' legitimate use) out there instead of carefully sharing the bandwidth saving power and sharing among more people, fattening the pockets of the cell phone mega-company wallets.

Can't win. Can't win.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

R0b0t1 · Apprentice Joined: 05 Jun 2008 Posts: 264

eccerr0r · Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2017 4:57 am Post subject:

Sorry for going way off topic...

Your empty box argument does not hold, you need to put something in to make it interfere with other people. Plus whatever the box is, as a unit, needs to always pass emissions tests. Truly empty boxes have nothing to interfere and thus you can get away with it by default. But in the general case if you put electronics in it - you do realize that even computers without radios still need to pass FCC rules? Even a printer, digital scale, or even an AM/FM radio? You can't sell a computer to businesses that don't pass class A and residences class B RF interference. Anything that possibly *could* interfere are subject to FCC rules.

(BTW, the LO in an AM/FM radio could interfere with other radios and hence subject to the rules too. Anything electrical have possibility of causing interference from mere sparks from motor commutators.)

The old analog transmitter issue "loophole" I mention is because it's actually "easy" to make it go off target. It's not really a "loophole" but rather something that are also covered by the laws minus the ease of hacking them. Take an old CB or walkie talkie, though granted for the most part you still need the solder iron, it's not hard to make it go off frequency or over power because they're made with discrete components (nevermind people building external RF power amplifiers which clearly need to be certified separately and would clearly be denied by the FCC.)

However on digital hardware, it's quite a bit easier to do these things if they're BUILT into the digital hardware and you only need a few keystrokes and/or mouse clicks and access them.

Is there a reason you specifically left out the tragedy of the commons issue? This is the key point why they're there to begin with. No other reason. People will NOT behave, just witness all the people transmitting over power because they can't be heard up until the point it will become simply ridiculous, the airwaves would simply become a mess, people would create devices to purposefully deny use of the airwaves when they try to be "behave" with frequencies in order to get the most number of people sharing the bandwidth. It's sad.
_________________
Intel Core i7 2700K/Radeon R7 250/24GB DDR3/256GB SSD
What am I supposed watching?

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Oct 05, 2017 11:05 am Post subject:

Should we discuss software defined radios here?
Its only a matter of time until market pressures move things in this direction.

Its getting easier, not harder, to change transmitter operating parameters in software.
I think that's a trend that will continue too.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

szatox · Advocate Joined: 27 Aug 2013 Posts: 3131

I wonder how they manage to change "transmitter parameters" in software.
Analog devices use resonance to fish out the signal from noise, but the resonance frequency is a parameter of a physical circuit, and can only be tuned (usually by changing capacity of the resonance circuit) within some small range, so "attaching your sound card to a transmitter" doesn't make it a "software defined" - the transmitter is an actual hardware with literally hardwired properties, and your software only provides the data stream.
Does anyone have links to papers describing the principles of digital radio transmission? It already gets interesting here, with phase shift codding. I'm curious how they boost signal/noise ratio on the receiving end, but couldn't really find anything on this matter (it was some time ago, but still...).