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Posts: 249 | Thanked: 277 times | Joined on May 2010 @ Brighton, UK
#698
Originally Posted by sulu View Post
I know. You surely mean this site:
http://wiki.debian.org/pkg-n900

The problem is that for most of the N900's hardware there are only closed drivers. Up to now there isn't even a properly working X-server under a native Debian installation. The N900 might be pretty open for a phone but if you compare it to normal PC hardware it's one of the most locked down systems that exist.

But even if one could manage to integrate all the proprietary firmwares into a standard Debian kernel one might get a running system but the result would have nothing to do with what Debian stands for (e.g. DSG). Technically the result would be pretty close to running Easy Debian on a Maemo that has no other software installed.
The reason to get a native Debian running on the N900 is not a technical one (Easy Debian does a pretty good job here) but an idealistic/politic/religious one (whatever you like to call that). And that can only be fulfilled if either the existing drivers are released under a Free license or the specs of the hardware are published so that the community could write its own Free drivers.
Therefore I think if one designs a new platform from scratch one should make sure to use hardware that can run on Free drivers completely. If that's the case we don't need an operating system anymore which is closed in many aspects itself.
I agree that there is a great benefit to a Debian-rebase. I don't see the binary blobs as such a big blocker though. There is form for this - things like the Nvidia binary blobs et al and of course the non-free section. We would still of course need our own kernel package though to maintain the binary interfaces until that magical day when we have enough OSS shims and replacements to update.

For all the things I might disagree with regarding the way Nemo/Mer plans does things, the hardware adaption model seems a sensible and practical one. Finding a way to manage those within the Debian infrastructure is the only way to give continued life to Maemo 5 by ensuring it can run on more devices than just the N900. Multiple kernels and binary blobs are the unavoidable price to pay for that.
 

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