[Freedombox-discuss] Some questions about the freedom maker

[Nick White]

Hi all,

I recently got a BeagleBone Black, and it looks to me like the 
freedombox maker is a fantastic way to bootstrap a fully free debian 
system onto it. I have some questions about the process however, and 
hope to send a patch to the README to make it better once I figure 
things out ;)

Firstly, the ENABLE_NONFREE flag. I don't understand why it's needed 
for the BBB. The extra packages it needs (linux-image-armmp, 
u-boot-tools and u-boot) are all in the main section. Presumably 
there's something I'm missing, but reading the code I can't see it.  
The https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox/Hardware/BeagleBone page 
implies it shouldn't need anything nonfree.

Secondly, can I build this from a wheezy (stable) box? Given that 
the -armmp kernel is only available from jessie, I presume the image 
must be jessie based, but I don't know enough about vmdebootstrap to 
know if that is a problem.

I expect I'll have other questions, but freedombox maker looks 
great, so it seems well worth it.

Thanks alot,

Nick White