No one anywhere is daily driving a fully Foss OS, unless you can find someone running a GNU+Linux RISC-V PC, and is using it daily (sitting in front of it with keyboard & mouse or handicap equivalent) in some sort of non-automated desktop use fashion. Also they can’t access like 99.9% of the web.
x86-64 instruction set is proprietary. ARM is proprietary. The drivers within your smart phone modem are proprietary (unless you are someone who is using mainline PostMarketOS, which I have high doubts about)
In this day and age we’re mostly doing harm reduction. Android is harm reduction compared to iOS, just as GrapheneOS is harm reduction compared to AOSP. Maybe some day in the gay space communism future we can have pure fully Foss devices, but until then, we are stuck with harm reduction.
I honestly spent like a week, outlining what I would need to build a FOSS phone, on RISCV.
current revision could do it. it would be a bit slow, but it’s possible…
all was good till I hit two hardware bottlenecks.
GPU: unlike ARM which several manufacturers have 2d/3d accelerators. RiscV really doesn’t have that. all current implementations are primitive… (I have a Spacemit K1 SOC, I have been prototyping with and it’s entirely Vulkan based and stuck in mid stages of MESA development. so *Gl in Vulkan wrappers are broken… GUIs perform like a m68k machine from 1988…)
this is the big one, Modems. there is only two suppliers and both are vendor locked. they won’t provide hardware to ANYONE without a contract. — this is why 5g USB/PCI-E modems don’t exist. there is a monopoly no one is talking about…
until these two points are addressed a foss phone is not possible. not even close. ~ even if you damage control on software (aosp) and some how convince amd/Intel to sell you chips for GPU on a PCIe lane sharing ram…
your still stuck on the modem. some one needs to get the ball rolling on a monopoly suit against the big two.
No one anywhere is daily driving a fully Foss OS, unless you can find someone running a GNU+Linux RISC-V PC, and is using it daily (sitting in front of it with keyboard & mouse or handicap equivalent) in some sort of non-automated desktop use fashion. Also they can’t access like 99.9% of the web.
x86-64 instruction set is proprietary. ARM is proprietary. The drivers within your smart phone modem are proprietary (unless you are someone who is using mainline PostMarketOS, which I have high doubts about)
In this day and age we’re mostly doing harm reduction. Android is harm reduction compared to iOS, just as GrapheneOS is harm reduction compared to AOSP. Maybe some day in the gay space communism future we can have pure fully Foss devices, but until then, we are stuck with harm reduction.
I honestly spent like a week, outlining what I would need to build a FOSS phone, on RISCV.
current revision could do it. it would be a bit slow, but it’s possible…
all was good till I hit two hardware bottlenecks.
GPU: unlike ARM which several manufacturers have 2d/3d accelerators. RiscV really doesn’t have that. all current implementations are primitive… (I have a Spacemit K1 SOC, I have been prototyping with and it’s entirely Vulkan based and stuck in mid stages of MESA development. so *Gl in Vulkan wrappers are broken… GUIs perform like a m68k machine from 1988…)
this is the big one, Modems. there is only two suppliers and both are vendor locked. they won’t provide hardware to ANYONE without a contract. — this is why 5g USB/PCI-E modems don’t exist. there is a monopoly no one is talking about…
until these two points are addressed a foss phone is not possible. not even close. ~ even if you damage control on software (aosp) and some how convince amd/Intel to sell you chips for GPU on a PCIe lane sharing ram…
your still stuck on the modem. some one needs to get the ball rolling on a monopoly suit against the big two.
I would love to see a lawsuit over that honestly. I dont think we’ll see it anytime soon unless something extravagant happens, but I’d love to see it.
Stop Patrick your scaring him.