[Freedombox-discuss] ARM64 board for Debian/Freedombox

[Evelyn Pereira Souza]

On 10.09.22 17:07, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> Evelyn Pereira Souza via Freedombox-discuss [2022-09-10 16:06:14] wrote:
>> Now I want something more open, Open Source.  Therefore pure Debian and
>> a more open hardware than the Raspberry.
> 
> You might like to be more precise about what you mean here.
> "Open Source" doesn't map very simply to hardware, so it can mean
> different things to different people in different contexts.
> 
> Do you mean that you're looking for a board which you can use with
> a pure Debian and no `non-free` packages (and hence no proprietary blobs)?

Yes exactly. That's exactly what I'm looking for.

> 
>> I looked which HW is supported by Freedombox and then if the hardware is
>> Open Source and sold locally (toppreise.ch). I don't wish to
>> import anything.
>>
>> Thereby I came to the decision to buy BeagleBone Black.
> 
> Indeed, looking at the site you mention, there isn't much to choose from :-(
> I know nothing about this beaglebone board, but I noticed that your
> title says "ARM64" whereas that board is an ARM32.  More specifically,
> the CPU is single-core Cortex-A8 at 1GHz.  So it's at best comparable to
> a Raspberry Pi 2.

Your input has helped me a lot. Thank you. I want a board with 
comparable performance to RPI4. The board I chose can barely host a 
Freedombox, that would be very tedious.


> In terms of avoiding blobs and having the board well-supported by the
> vanilla kernel (which are my two priorities), I've had good experiences
> with Allwinner SoCs from the A20 era (e.g. BananaPi), which is somewhat
> comparable to the Beaglebone Black.  It's sad that this great experience
> happened *despite* the total absence of support from Allwinner, tho.
> 
> I recently had to replace one of those and ended up buying an Odroid-M1,
> which is based around a Rockchip SoC.  These SoCs tend to be reasonably well
> supported by the vanilla kernel, as well, tho in this case I'm still
> currently stuck with a non-vanilla kernel (tho at least it's a kernel
> based on the latest Linux code rather than some outdated version (as is
> sadly the rule in ARM-land), so I still hope that I'll be able to use
> a vanilla kernel soonish).

Thanks for the tip regarding Odroid-M1. I didn't quite understand why 
you didn't use a standard Debian kernel?

I can buy this board in the local store. What all do I need (like a 
starter kit)? Power cable? SD Card etc?

https://www.reichelt.com/ch/de/odroid-m1-4x-2-ghz-8-gb-ram-odroid-m1-8gb-p326794.html?&trstct=pos_2&nbc=1
>          Stefan

have a great day

kind regards
Evelyn

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_0x61776FA8E38403FB.asc
Type: application/pgp-keys
Size: 2448 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP public key
URL: <http://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/attachments/20220911/940b9a60/attachment-0001.key>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 665 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://alioth-lists.debian.net/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/attachments/20220911/940b9a60/attachment-0001.sig>