GuixSD and free hardware

GuixSD and free hardware

[Gammel Holte]

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Hello everyone,

as a user, I've joined Guix due to technical reasons (functional package
management in Scheme) and focus on freedom (linux-libre kernel, etc). I
guess many people here share these values.

Freedom ultimately depends on the underlying hardware too. My goal is to do
all my computing on devices that respect my freedom. Right now, this is
mostly possible using rather old machines (e.g., MacBook 2,1 or Nokia N900)
which bothers me a bit (hardware is slow and increasingly hard to buy).

I would like to draw your attention to new Rockchip ARM machines (e.g. Asus
C201). These are very cheap, easy to reflash and can be run without any
blobs (except 3D acceleration, unless the Lima driver gets finished). They
don't even need CPU microcdes. Paul Kocialkowski (of Replicant fame)
recently added Libreboot support to the C201 [1].

In my opinion, it'd be really nice to have GuixSD polished on this
architecture, so that users can buy one and get things going with minimal
effort. Sort of a few reference devices like what BSD does with some
Thinkpads. If running linux-libre, and wishing to have libreboot as a
bootloader, there are not that many choices.

There are also 2 devices (yet to be released) that might be fantastic to
get GuixSD running on mobile phones: DragonBox Pyra [2] and Neo900 [3].

Cheers.

[1] http://www.libreboot.org/docs/hcl/c201.html
[2] https://boards.openpandora.org/pyramain/main/
[3] http://neo900.org/

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Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Christopher Allan Webber]

Gammel Holte writes:

> Hello everyone,
>
> as a user, I've joined Guix due to technical reasons (functional package
> management in Scheme) and focus on freedom (linux-libre kernel, etc). I
> guess many people here share these values.
>
> Freedom ultimately depends on the underlying hardware too. My goal is to do
> all my computing on devices that respect my freedom. Right now, this is
> mostly possible using rather old machines (e.g., MacBook 2,1 or Nokia N900)
> which bothers me a bit (hardware is slow and increasingly hard to buy).
>
> I would like to draw your attention to new Rockchip ARM machines (e.g. Asus
> C201). These are very cheap, easy to reflash and can be run without any
> blobs (except 3D acceleration, unless the Lima driver gets finished). They
> don't even need CPU microcdes. Paul Kocialkowski (of Replicant fame)
> recently added Libreboot support to the C201 [1].
>
> In my opinion, it'd be really nice to have GuixSD polished on this
> architecture, so that users can buy one and get things going with minimal
> effort. Sort of a few reference devices like what BSD does with some
> Thinkpads. If running linux-libre, and wishing to have libreboot as a
> bootloader, there are not that many choices.
>
> There are also 2 devices (yet to be released) that might be fantastic to
> get GuixSD running on mobile phones: DragonBox Pyra [2] and Neo900 [3].
>
> Cheers.
>
> [1] http://www.libreboot.org/docs/hcl/c201.html
> [2] https://boards.openpandora.org/pyramain/main/
> [3] http://neo900.org/

Along these lines, it might be interesting if we can get more of the
guix "core" packages in Guix paired down in size.  It's unlikely that
I'm going to be building packages on a neo900 or etc, but I might want
all my small devices in my house to be running Guix, in an ideal world.
I think if I can build the profiles for all my devices and then splat
them across my network, that might be pretty great.  Obviously the "guix
deploy" stuff will help there (sorry, yes, I will be getting to helping
on it soon...) but iirc many of our base packages are pretty large,
mostly because they contain more manuals and etc than needed.

In other words, imagine a future where people really do have many small
"smart devices" (I hate that term, but less bad than "internet of
things", which I have perma-mapped to "internet of someone else's
things" now)... or rather, it's hard to not imagine this situation
growing.  It would be nice if my neo900 and other things could
eventually run Guix, rather than some one-off distro.

I wonder how far off from that world we are?

Sorry if the above was a bit much of a ramble :)

Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Leo Famulari]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015, at 17:51, Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
> Along these lines, it might be interesting if we can get more of the
> guix "core" packages in Guix paired down in size.  It's unlikely that
> I'm going to be building packages on a neo900 or etc, but I might want
> all my small devices in my house to be running Guix, in an ideal world.
> I think if I can build the profiles for all my devices and then splat
> them across my network, that might be pretty great.  Obviously the "guix
> deploy" stuff will help there (sorry, yes, I will be getting to helping
> on it soon...) but iirc many of our base packages are pretty large,
> mostly because they contain more manuals and etc than needed.

A lot of packages already put the documentation in separate outputs.

For example, see gnu/packages/libx11.scm (any formatting problems are
the fault of my copying and pasting:
[...]
    (outputs '("out"
               "doc"))                            ;8 MiB of man pages +
               XML
[...]

Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Daniel Pimentel]

Great!

I have one thinkpad x60 and x200t with GuixSD, in soon I'll try use 
libreboot.

-- 
Daniel Pimentel (d4n1 3:)

Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Ludovic Courtès]

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> On Thu, Oct 15, 2015, at 17:51, Christopher Allan Webber wrote:
>> Along these lines, it might be interesting if we can get more of the
>> guix "core" packages in Guix paired down in size.  It's unlikely that
>> I'm going to be building packages on a neo900 or etc, but I might want
>> all my small devices in my house to be running Guix, in an ideal world.
>> I think if I can build the profiles for all my devices and then splat
>> them across my network, that might be pretty great.  Obviously the "guix
>> deploy" stuff will help there (sorry, yes, I will be getting to helping
>> on it soon...) but iirc many of our base packages are pretty large,
>> mostly because they contain more manuals and etc than needed.
>
> A lot of packages already put the documentation in separate outputs.

Yes.  I’m sure there are many others that could benefit from such
optimizations, and we’ll get there.

For packages that take less than a few MiB in total, which is probably
the majority, we do keep documentation, which usually consists of Info
manuals and man pages, both gzipped.  I think it wouldn’t make much
sense to remove documentation for these.

But anyway, I agree that we need to pay attention to the size of
packages and the size of their closure; ‘guix size’ was added to help
with that.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hello!

Gammel Holte <gammel.holte@gmail.com> skribis:

> I would like to draw your attention to new Rockchip ARM machines (e.g. Asus
> C201). These are very cheap, easy to reflash and can be run without any
> blobs (except 3D acceleration, unless the Lima driver gets finished). They
> don't even need CPU microcdes. Paul Kocialkowski (of Replicant fame)
> recently added Libreboot support to the C201 [1].
>
> In my opinion, it'd be really nice to have GuixSD polished on this
> architecture, so that users can buy one and get things going with minimal
> effort. Sort of a few reference devices like what BSD does with some
> Thinkpads. If running linux-libre, and wishing to have libreboot as a
> bootloader, there are not that many choices.

I think many of us are interested in having GuixSD on those devices.

Mark recently ported GuixSD to mips, which allowed him to identify
architecture-specific assumptions need to be addressed.  That was an
important first step.

There’s also the question of whether we can use GRUB on these platforms,
since GuixSD pretty much relies on it.  Latest GRUB reportedly works on
(some) ARM platforms:
<https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Kernel/GRUB>.

It would be good to see if GRUB can be used as the LibreBoot payload on
the C201, as a replacement for ‘depthcharge’.

Thanks,
Ludo’.

Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Gammel Holte]

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On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 9:32 AM, Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> wrote:

> I think many of us are interested in having GuixSD on those devices.
>
> Mark recently ported GuixSD to mips, which allowed him to identify
> architecture-specific assumptions need to be addressed.  That was an
> important first step.
>
> There’s also the question of whether we can use GRUB on these platforms,
> since GuixSD pretty much relies on it.  Latest GRUB reportedly works on
> (some) ARM platforms:
> <https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Kernel/GRUB>.
>
> It would be good to see if GRUB can be used as the LibreBoot payload on
> the C201, as a replacement for ‘depthcharge’.
>

It's good news GuixSD is interested in supporting these machines, as I
think it's gonna be where the majority of (mostly)-free hardware comes in
the near future.

I might try to buy a C201 soon to see if I can get GuixSD running. I hadn't
thought about possible issues with an ARM payload on Libreboot. That's a
very good point.

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Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Gammel Holte]

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On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 10:51 PM, Christopher Allan Webber <
cwebber@dustycloud.org> wrote:

> Along these lines, it might be interesting if we can get more of the
> guix "core" packages in Guix paired down in size.  It's unlikely that
> I'm going to be building packages on a neo900 or etc, but I might want
> all my small devices in my house to be running Guix, in an ideal world.
> I think if I can build the profiles for all my devices and then splat
> them across my network, that might be pretty great.  Obviously the "guix
> deploy" stuff will help there (sorry, yes, I will be getting to helping
> on it soon...) but iirc many of our base packages are pretty large,
> mostly because they contain more manuals and etc than needed.
>
> In other words, imagine a future where people really do have many small
> "smart devices" (I hate that term, but less bad than "internet of
> things", which I have perma-mapped to "internet of someone else's
> things" now)... or rather, it's hard to not imagine this situation
> growing.  It would be nice if my neo900 and other things could
> eventually run Guix, rather than some one-off distro.
>
> I wonder how far off from that world we are?
>
> Sorry if the above was a bit much of a ramble :)
>

My anecdotal experience is that Guix packages are way lighter than Nix
ones. Especially their closures.

Besides, ARM is supported so we should not be that far.

Of course, scaling down to tiny devices might require some really thin
custom outputs for a number packages.

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Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Mark H Weaver]

ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:

> Hello!
>
> Gammel Holte <gammel.holte@gmail.com> skribis:
>
>> I would like to draw your attention to new Rockchip ARM machines (e.g. Asus
>> C201). These are very cheap, easy to reflash and can be run without any
>> blobs (except 3D acceleration, unless the Lima driver gets finished). They
>> don't even need CPU microcdes. Paul Kocialkowski (of Replicant fame)
>> recently added Libreboot support to the C201 [1].
>>
>> In my opinion, it'd be really nice to have GuixSD polished on this
>> architecture, so that users can buy one and get things going with minimal
>> effort. Sort of a few reference devices like what BSD does with some
>> Thinkpads. If running linux-libre, and wishing to have libreboot as a
>> bootloader, there are not that many choices.
>
> I think many of us are interested in having GuixSD on those devices.
>
> Mark recently ported GuixSD to mips, which allowed him to identify
> architecture-specific assumptions need to be addressed.  That was an
> important first step.
>
> There’s also the question of whether we can use GRUB on these platforms,
> since GuixSD pretty much relies on it.  Latest GRUB reportedly works on
> (some) ARM platforms:
> <https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Kernel/GRUB>.

If I understand correctly, GRUB has been ported to the 'arm-uboot'
platform, but not yet 'arm-coreboot'.

> It would be good to see if GRUB can be used as the LibreBoot payload on
> the C201, as a replacement for ‘depthcharge’.

I guess this won't be possible until either GRUB is ported to
'arm-coreboot', or u-boot is ported to the C201.

      Mark

Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Pjotr Prins]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 10:32:28AM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> I think many of us are interested in having GuixSD on those devices.

Absolutely! OpenWRT runs MIPS routers and replacing those
eventually with Guix support would be great.

> Mark recently ported GuixSD to mips, which allowed him to identify
> architecture-specific assumptions need to be addressed.  That was an
> important first step.

+1. GNU Guix is taking us to amazing places and free hardware would be
a great asset. 

Anyone feels like contributing a hardware/architechture talk to FOSDEM
or any GUIX get together we may organise in 2016 - feel free!

Pj.
-- 

Re: GuixSD and free hardware

[Efraim Flashner]

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On Fri, 16 Oct 2015 12:01:52 -0400
Mark H Weaver <mhw@netris.org> wrote:

> ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes:
> 
> > Hello!
> >
> > Gammel Holte <gammel.holte@gmail.com> skribis:
> >  
> >> I would like to draw your attention to new Rockchip ARM machines (e.g. Asus
> >> C201). These are very cheap, easy to reflash and can be run without any
> >> blobs (except 3D acceleration, unless the Lima driver gets finished). They
> >> don't even need CPU microcdes. Paul Kocialkowski (of Replicant fame)
> >> recently added Libreboot support to the C201 [1].
> >>
> >> In my opinion, it'd be really nice to have GuixSD polished on this
> >> architecture, so that users can buy one and get things going with minimal
> >> effort. Sort of a few reference devices like what BSD does with some
> >> Thinkpads. If running linux-libre, and wishing to have libreboot as a
> >> bootloader, there are not that many choices.  
> >
> > I think many of us are interested in having GuixSD on those devices.
> >
> > Mark recently ported GuixSD to mips, which allowed him to identify
> > architecture-specific assumptions need to be addressed.  That was an
> > important first step.
> >
> > There’s also the question of whether we can use GRUB on these platforms,
> > since GuixSD pretty much relies on it.  Latest GRUB reportedly works on
> > (some) ARM platforms:
> > <https://wiki.linaro.org/LEG/Engineering/Kernel/GRUB>.  
> 
> If I understand correctly, GRUB has been ported to the 'arm-uboot'
> platform, but not yet 'arm-coreboot'.

Poking around github a bit I came across rockchip's github codedump account,
and they have a u-boot repository for some of their rk3X88 (and rk3066)
chips. https://github.com/linux-rockchip/u-boot-rockchip If I understand the
boot process correctly, depending on the board, the "boot order" is u-boot =>
"ZImage" kernel => rootfs.

> 
> > It would be good to see if GRUB can be used as the LibreBoot payload on
> > the C201, as a replacement for ‘depthcharge’.  

This I don't know anything about

> 
> I guess this won't be possible until either GRUB is ported to
> 'arm-coreboot', or u-boot is ported to the C201.

If the chromebook is anything like my arm board (which is probably a big
assumption) then all we need to do is worry about getting the C201 to boot
up, and the kernel/electricity/magic will get all the "peripherals" powered
up and ready for instructions from the kernel. Since the C201 has an RK3288,
it might already be ready.

> 
>       Mark
> 
Efraim

-- 
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