BLAG

As many of you know there are binary blobs in the vanilla kernel. This doesn't conform with FSF standards for free distros. So BLAG is going to have a kernel with all of these bits removed. As part of that process, I've been making cleaned versions of the kernel source tarball. It was once named linux-blagged, now linux-libre, but may have another name in the near future (open to ideas).

Anyway, if you build your own kernel, please use this instead of the vanilla kernel.org kernel and let me know how it fares:

ftp://ftp.blagblagblag.org/pub/BLAG/lin ... .6/TESTING

Thanks,

-Jeff

Awesome! Just out of curiosity, though, is this firmware all for obsolete and rare hardware, or is this possibly going to render some people's hardware inoperable with the new kernel?

########################
# Removed char Drivers #
########################
COMPUTONE - Computone IntelliPort Plus serial
ATARI_DSP56K - DSP56001 Device Driver
DRM_MGA - Matrox g200/g400
DRM_R128 - ATI Rage 128
DRM_RADEON - ATI Radeon
#########################
# Removed Media Drivers #
#########################
DVB_TDA10021 - Philips TDA10021 based
DVB_TDA8083 - Philips TDA8083 based
DVB_VES1820 - VLSI VES1820 based
DVB_VES1X93 - VLSI VES1893 or VES1993 based
DVB_AV7110 - AV7110 cards
DVB_BUDGET_AV - Budget cards with analog video inputs
DVB_BUDGET_CI - Budget cards with onboard CI connector
DVB_TTUSB_BUDGET - Technotrend/Hauppauge Nova-USB devices
USB_PWC - USB Philips Cameras
VIDEO_CPIA - CPiA Video For Linux
USB_DABUSB - DABUSB driver
USB_SN9C102 - USB SN9C1xx PC Camera Controller support
USB_IBMCAM - USB IBM (Xirlink) C-it Camera support
USB_VICAM - USB 3com HomeConnect (aka vicam)
#######################
# Removed net Drivers #
#######################
ACENIC - Alteon AceNIC/3Com 3C985/NetGear GA620 Gigabit
ADAPTEC_STARFIRE - Adaptec Starfire/DuraLAN support
BNX2 - Broadcom NetXtremeII
CASSINI - Sun Cassini
E100 - Intel(R) PRO/100+
MYRI_SBUS - MyriCOM Gigabit Ethernet
TEHUTI - Tehuti Networks 10G Ethernet
TIGON3 - Broadcom Tigon3
TYPHOON - 3cr990 series Typhoon
COPS - COPS LocalTalk PC
YAM - YAM driver for AX.25
PCMCIA_SMC91C92 - SMC 91Cxx PCMCIA
3C359 - 3Com 3C359 Token Link Velocity XL adapter
SMCTR - SMC ISA/MCA adapter
USB_KAWETH - USB KLSI KL5USB101-based ethernet device support
########################
# Removed s390 Drivers #
########################
QETH - Gigabit Ethernet device support
########################
# Removed SCSI Drivers #
########################
SCSI_QLOGICPTI - PTI Qlogic, ISP Driver
SCSI_ADVANSYS - AdvanSys SCSI
SCSI_QLOGIC_1280 - Qlogic QLA 1240/1x80/1x160 SCSI
#######################
# Removed USB Drivers #
#######################
USB_EMI26 - EMI 2|6 USB Audio interface
USB_EMI62 - EMI 6|2m USB Audio interface
USB_SISUSBVGA - USB 2.0 SVGA dongle support (Net2280/SiS315)
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_MPR - USB Keyspan MPR Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA18X - USB Keyspan USA-18X Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA19 - USB Keyspan USA-19 Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA19QI - USB Keyspan USA-19QI Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA19QW - USB Keyspan USA-19QW Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA19W - USB Keyspan USA-19W Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA28 - USB Keyspan USA-28 Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA28XA - USB Keyspan USA-28XA Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA28XB - USB Keyspan USA-28XB Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA28X - USB Keyspan USA-28X Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA49W - USB Keyspan USA-49W Firmware
USB_SERIAL_KEYSPAN_USA49WLC - USB Keyspan USA-49WLC Firmware
USB_SERIAL_EDGEPORT - USB Inside Out Edgeport Serial Driver
USB_SERIAL_EDGEPORT_TI - USB Inside Out Edgeport Serial Driver (TI devices)
USB_SERIAL_TI - USB TI 3410/5052 Serial Driver
USB_SERIAL_WHITEHEAT - USB ConnectTech WhiteHEAT Serial Driver
#########################
# Removed video Drivers #
#########################
FB_ASILIANT - Asiliant (Chips) 69000 display support
FB_CT65550 - Chips 65550 display support
#########################
# Removed Sound Drivers #
#########################
SND_CS46XX - Cirrus Logic (Sound Fusion)
SND_KORG1212 - Korg 1212 IO
SND_MAESTRO3 - ESS Allegro/Maestro3
SND_YMFPCI - Yamaha YMF724/740/744/754

Does this leave us with the open source driver? Also, they announced open source drivers, have they managed to come out yet?

Basically "all" cards out there will at least be supported by VESA. Also, this just removes 3d support, afaics. Some info:

http://dri.freedesktop.org/wiki/DRM

So worst case it'll just be slower if you have that exact model.

This may be in some older thinkpads (600X, *20 series, p3 era).

Just to be clear here, what is being removed is not the binary driver that ATI distributes but bits that are in the kernel which then support things like 3d. I have this card myself and the new 2.6.24.2.1 works fine, but without accelerated 3d (which is mostly used for games or whatever--you dont need it to surf the net, edit video, write documents, etc).

-Jeff

Has anyone asked Linus why he is allowing this non-free stuff in the kernel? Isn't it a violation of the GPLv2?

Patches such as this were just submitted to LKML by David Woodhouse:



http://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/23/170



In sum, Alexandre Oliva did a remarkable job setting up and maintaining a kernel-libre repository for Fedora (which BLAG uses). He berated FESCO (or whatever the rh board thing is) til they decided the blobs were against their stated goals (roughly) and now this is happening upstream at LKML.

Amazing little system this free software thing.

dwmw2's git kernel repository related to the non-free firmware prob:

http://git.infradead.org/users/dwmw2/firmware-2.6.git

http://lkml.org/lkml/2020/5/29/281

Wow. There seems to be a bit of momentum behind this effort, but we all know where it began... :^)

gNewSense is where it began, but jebba really helped get the ball rolling to the larger community.

and even before that debian developers did quite a bit to *identify* bad drivers, though not many of them actually got removed.