Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Even the Raspberry pi has a few areas of concern with propriety firmware and closed codecs. It is not a completely open hardware platform, it does run code that no eyes can see.


Go Beaglebone then. The SBC market is enormous these days.


Beaglebone is even worse, with a PowerVR GPU and blobs to make the PRUs work correctly.

It's pretty difficult to find a device with completely open drivers, let alone open firmwares and memory initialization.


I do believe system76 laptops are almost completely open source other than the intel microcode.


That's because completely open drivers have no value even to tech. enthusiasts. If they did, vendors would offer them.


Yes you're right finding open source GPU drivers is hard. Rock Pi 4 with panfrost?


I don't entirely get the notion that computing has to be 100% open for anybody to learn anything. My pulling-back-the-curtain moment was booting Linux on an Xbox & hand building a VGA adapter. Had never touched Linux or a soldering iron before that. Was it easy, no, but that's literally what made it so engaging & educational.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: