Hello everyone,
Is there a Raspberry Pi-like SBC that comes with open sourced firmware by default or are there tools (e.g. like libreboot) that can turn a Raspberry Pi or similar device into a fully open source board? Thanks.
Allwinner most of their A-series and H-series, Rockchip RK3399/RK3566/RK3588 ?
I know the RockPro64 can boot a blob-free u-boot: Blobless boot with RockPro64 | Andrius Štikonas
1 Like
AmLogic setups in the 904x and 922 series run u-boot and can run mainline linux kernels starting with 5.13. You may loose some feature related to media processing (encoding/decoding) due to driver regressions since AmLogic properly only supports 4.19 with their custom kernel and firmware.
In my use cases, I use them as headless systems for NAS, home assistant, and other embedded solution.
I am sure that there are other systems out there but have you looked at anything running RISC V? Not as performant or prevalent yet but again, depending on task, may satisfy your needs.
Hmm, are these boards completely liberated i.e. memory controller, gpu etc?
That does not exist, anywhere. Not even on RISC V. The closest that you will get with that would be openfirmware for the POWER architecture.
And you’ll still be dealing with on device firmware for things like NICs, usb peripherals etc.
1 Like
I see, are there any Power-based SBCs running openfirmware? If not, what’s the next best alternative that’s closest to that ideal? Thanks.
I wish there were POWER SBCs. There are switches and routers that do run power but they obviously have no display.
Note that you can hack a new bios into some laptops and get exactly what you are looking for. Just thought I would mention.
Coreboot is cool
Good point. Coreboot paired with GNU GUIX System would give you a totally free (maybe crippled) system.
**Edit
Product name change.
Depends on the brand. Asus boards are fucking stupid. They went and bought up an assload of high performance MCA’s and southbridges on their more expensive core 2 machines. I can run beta i7’s and i5’s in a socket p system with coreboot.
The only crippled part is the uart ability. If you get a laptop with open uarts, you’re golden.
Edit:. Also note you get pcie in many cases with this and it DOESN’T suck
Thanks but a laptop would be too large for what I am trying to build (a little CV robot). I am thinking of getting a RockPro64 which runs u-boot (apparently as libre as libreboot) and maybe running something like Guix on it. Not sure if I can go more libre than that for the time being.
Something like that should work fine. Can confirm u-boot (when prepared like the guide I posted earlier) is just as Free as Libreboot. Linux-Libre kernel should also work. Has Mali GPU so sould work using the Lima driver. The wifi card Pine64 offers for the RockPro does require proprietary firmware though; you could use a pcie card with an atheros wifi chip though if you need it, that’s what I’ve done.
2 Likes
Good tips, thanks.