BLAG

Hello All

I'm running the public RHEL 7 beta on this laptop that has an Atheros wifi card that uses the ath5k driver. That driver is fully free and requires no firmware. The graphics is Intel as well, so fully free works fine on this Thinkpad x61s.

Red Hat have removed support for some of the older wifi cards including Ath5k, so I downloaded the libre kernel for Fedora 19 (on which RHEL 7 is based) from

[ not allowed to post link yet ]

and installed it. Works fine. With wifi :-)

This got me thinking as to the possibility of adapting the Freed-ora repositories/method to a CentOS/Scientific Linux/Springdale Linux install. The advantage being much longer support cycle for any one release, while retaining the yum/rpm packaging system that people seem to value.

Am I talking rubbish here?

Absolutely not! Some blaggers spoke about that (Blag based on centos) since time now.
I'll receive this box next week: http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/. OK, since I'm French speaking I'll have to insytall it in French language but with a qwerty UK keyboard.

Freed-ora has no repos. It is just a fedora freed. because of that we have to build a repo and a live CD for blag staying alive (No, it is not Moriarty ring!)

I read next GdNewHat will not be based on Centos but on fedora 20. They thought about switching to centos to have a more stable distro but it'll not be. So you're right; why not make blag centos based? I know old blaggers want blag to stay as it founder make it. I like tradition too! But............

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Blag'em up!

Alas, I found the gluglug shop about a week after buying an x61s on ebay!

Well, if the blagblag gang want to chase Fedora, I'll come along for the ride.

I think that a CentOS based reincarnation might have allowed more concentration of resources and time however.

Post a review of your gluglug thinkpad somewhere, I'd like to know about coreboot.

You can start reading this: http://trisquel.info/fr/forum/gluglug-thinkpad-x60-w-coreboot-mini-review

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Blag'em up!

Yes why not?

CentOS 5 and 6 was supported for ten years..!


Very Good lead Keithpeter.;-)

Trying CentOS sounds interesting to me, let's see what other blaggers think. Can we use the same free kernel or we should make or look for a new one? It's a good idea to discuss and try.

Please don't assume I know what I am doing ;-)

I'm using the RHEL 7 public beta and I used the CentOS wiki instructions to compile the Red Hat kernel with the Atheros 5k driver configured in the kernel.spec file. The kernel source can be downloaded from...

ftp redhat com redhat rhel beta 7 source SRPMS

Red Hat have dropped quite a number of older wifi and other drivers from the new kernel - let's face it this thing will be supported until 2025 or so.

I've also simply downloaded and installed the binary rpm for the Fedora 19 kernel, works fine again.

OK, so how do I remove binary blobs from a kernel? I'm assuming that is done by using make menuconfig and unticking all the appropriate device drivers &c. Is freed ora where I can find a list of what device drivers to untick? Do I need to look at the linux-firmware srpm as well and build a version of that which leaves out references/configs/headers to proprietary blobs? I'm assuming the source code will have some kind of 'stub' or 'pointer' to the binary.
Anyone got any reading?

PS: If the blaggers are *really* traditional, CentOS 6 has support until 2017 with security only until 2020. That is Gnome 2.28 based and nice and fast - works really well on a Core Duo 2 class laptop. The kernel source is on the CentOS repo and there are instructions for recompiling on the CentOS wiki.

Since the beginning blag is based on fedora; so the tradition is to keep it based on fedora.

PS: You know, most of blaggers are debian users too; so if we want something more "stable" we have debian.

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Blag'em up!

Don't worry, I think is a good idea to develop new 100% free distros, even if no totally free if there are more linux distributions is better for all of us. If anybody wants to try a free centOS should do it, surely its name won't be blag, but could be something new, exciting and interesting.

If you are decided to try it tell me, I could give a little help. Of course the blag efforts continue.

I am sure there are enough users of RHEL based clones that would like it being free-ed.

Perhaps off-topic, but as user of Scientific Linux (a clone of RHEL), I am sure if you drop a line about this on the Scientific Linux Forum you will get a respons there too ;-)