A screenshot of my AROS desktop running some applications.

My interest in free software has grown the last ten or so years. It has not always been there. I grew up with Commodore 64 and the Amiga. Actually, I am still using the Commodore 64 for the sake of fun, but that is another story. I have since a long while back abandoned the Amiga and its operating system, although I liked it a lot back in the days. It simply was run over by other modern systems, and the fact that it was all but free.

AROS was originally an acronym for Amiga Research Operating System. It was an effort making a free software operating system, fully AmigaOS compliant on API level. I looked at it in around 2000, but at that time it did not even have ATA support, making it pretty useless. In practice it had to be hosted on a GNU/Linux system.

A week ago, it just came to my mind that I should look for the progress of AROS. I though it was dead since a decade back or so, but by curiosity I did a little googling. Just to find out that it is more active than ever. There are several bootable live DVDs available, ready to be used on supported hardware or in virtual machines. The name is still the same acronym, but it now is for AROS Research Operating System. I guess it might have something to do with trademarks, or simply the fact that all good free operating systems should have a name based on a recursive acronym.

I tried booting the live DVD of the so called Icaros distribution on my ThinkPad X301. And hey, it booted, and launched a graphical desktop! The mouse was supported out of the box. Hardware accelerated graphics driver for the Intel video chipset, with screen dragging like the AmigaOS. Even the Intel audio chipset playback works. What does not work is the Intel network, nor the WiFi card. AROS does support both network and WiFi, but with a small number of drivers.

I installed Icaros on my ThinkPad T43, and it works nicely even there, save the fact that  the ATI video driver is quite buggy. No support for network or WiFi either, but the sound is supported. I also installed it on my old netbook, ASUS eeePC 901. Same kind of support there. I am currentlywaiting for a couple of WiFi cards I eBayed supported by AROS to try with. Meanwhile I have configured a VirtualBox machine with full support for AROS, which I can use to try things out.

The greatest benefit with AROS is the speed. It is very responsive and it boots in seconds, even on an older machine with mechanical harddrive and little RAM. It has a  somewhat modern web browser, at least compared to IBrowse on the AmigaOS I was  using for many years. The system is lacking features you are used to with modern systems, but is still a good lightweight option. And it offers good AmigaOS feeling, and it is free.

I will probably spend more time with AROS than with Hurd. I have even started porting an ssh client to AROS, as that is one of the important missing features.

I will keep you updated whenever I feel there are good news.

Happy GNU Year!

I recently wrote about my plans for installing Coreboot on my ThinkPad T60p. It’s now done. I received the Bus Pirate programmer. I disassembled my computer and soldered wires from the flash chip, long enough to stick out from the computer when assembled. It took an hour just to remove all things needed to reach the chip, and after the soldering it took two hours to get all things back in place.

After a lot of trial and error, I finally managed to get Coreboot working on my machine. As it takes around one hour to flash the 2 MB chip using the Bus Pirate, trial and erroring is a time consuming task. When you finally have Coreboot in place, you can flash the chip from the system in seconds, until you flash something unbootable. Then you need to connect the programmer again, reflashing something good.

So what are the benefits with Coreboot? For me, the idea was to get a fully free system. Now I have it! But I also realized some bonus features I did not count on. The system fan goes at lower speed, still keeping the system stable. Much quieter. Booting the system is also much quicker, even though I have installed SeaBIOS, which is a free implementation of an “ordinary” BIOS. It will be even quicker after my next project; installing GRUB2 as a Coreboot payload, meaning that the system bootloader will be executed as soon as you power up the machine.

I wanted to have some user statistics on this site, to be able to improve it based on user patterns. Google Analytics is probably the best option, feature-wise, but of course I cannot rely on it for the sake of mine and my visitors privacy. Therefore I looked around for some kind of replacement to run on my own server. And so I found one; Piwki.

Piwki is just about what I want. It replaces Google Analytics with a tool you run on your own server. It offers similar functionality, but in a healthier way.

There are different ways of letting Piwki collect statistics about the users. The easiest way is to add a JavaScript to each page, just like with Google Analytics. There is also an API you can use if you like to register the statistics server-side. I use the client-side way, because that leaves the option for you to block it, in case you don’t like to leave footprints. I could have implemented it silently, but that’s bad behavior and not according to my view. I’d like everyone to know that I am collecting data about their behavior, and that I do not rely on any service out of my control, and that I am not going to share the data with anyone. Please also know that I have disabled logging of exact IP address. I filter out the least significant eight bits of your IPv4 address before it is added to the database.

In case you think this is unethical, please let me know, and I will consider disabling this logging.

Yesterday I got a present from a friend of mine; an IBM ThinkPad T60p. What a laptop! You really won’t need any external monitor nor mouse. It feels like a workstation all inclusive.

Oh well, to the point. I mentioned Coreboot in a previous post, where I said that it does not support many laptops. That is very true, but one of the few supported models happens to be ThinkPad T60p. What a coincidence!

I started by installing Trisquel GNU/Linux to have a free system to start with. I spared 10 GB of the hard drive for eventually trying out GNU/Hurd. Then I checked out the source of Coreboot and built it. To install Coreboot in BIOS, you can use a free tool called Flashrom. That step failed, however. It turned out that Flashrom cannot be used on the T60p with proprietary BIOS.

Tricky. I was hoping for a fully free laptop until Christmas. Unfortunately, the solution to the problem mentioned above is to program the BIOS chip with an external programmer. It is a quite nice chip with only 8 pins. Not socketed, but you can use an SPI programmer in place without removing the chip. I ordered one from eBay, which hopefully will arrive within a couple of weeks. Meanwhile I will open up the computer, looking for a good way of connecting the programmer. Probably solder some wires from the BIOS and install a connector as nicely as my skills allow in the chassi.

I will post pictures of the progress when time has come. Hopefully not of its funeral.

A while ago I set my laptop free by installing Trisquel GNU/Linux. As it is a 100% free system approved by Free Software Foundation, installing any proprietary software, including drivers and firmwares, would make no sense. Beside, almost everything vital work just as fine as with Ubuntu, except for the WiFi which requires a proprietary firmware blob. This is included with Ubuntu and in the main Linux (the kernel) distribution, but not with Linux Libre (a freed kernel included with Trisquel).

When searching for solutions I found out that the WiFi chip in a modern laptop is located on a replaceable MiniPCI, or as in my case MiniPCIe. I ordered one from eBay which should be able to use a free driver and firmware. Yesterday it arrived, and after I had installed it and started the computer, I was surprised by the message “Unauthorized network card is plugged in – Power off and remove the miniPCI network card”.

I removed the card and soon found myself yet again searching the Internet for a solution. I was obviously not the first one having this problem. There are different solutions to the problem. My choice was of course the most risky one; flashing the BIOS of the laptop with a hacked version, removing the check for whitelisted WiFi cards.

Imagine how dirty I felt, by the way! Flashing the BIOS is a dirty thing to do by itself, since that is a piece of proprietary software. Secondly I used a bootable Windows “live CD” in order to use the proprietary flashing software. I hope it did not touch any file on my hard drive. I should have removed it first, but I forgot to.

How can I know that Lenovo doesn’t use malicious code within the BIOS? And how can I know that the one who hacked it did only remove the whitelist check? The answer is, I can’t. And I don’t feel great about it. But as long as we don’t have a free BIOS, we have to live with it. We do have Coreboot, but it does not support many laptops yet. It is an important project though.

In case someone is interested in the images I built for the Nexus S today, I created a torrent with them. I have successfully installed them on my Nexus S. However, I won’t be responsible for any harm made by these images. Stay warned!

Replicant 2.3 for Nexus S, built 15 Dec 2011, torrent file

Please refer to the official installation guide, and please remember that these images are to be used on the Nexus S only!

Replicant is a distribution of Android aiming at being 100% free. No proprietary drivers, firmwares or applications. It currently support few devices. The latest member of the family is the Nexus S, created by Samsung and branded by Google themselves. When I heard about the Nexus S port of Replicant, I ordered one.

Today I have installed Replicant on my Nexus S. I wanted the latest and greatest code, so I had to build myself a set of images. To do that, I had to check out the code repository of 13 GB! On my old 2 GHz dual core, the build process took about two hours. Meanwhile, I “rooted” my phone, or unlocked the boot loader that is.

The freshly built images installed without any troubles at all. Booting and logging in to the phone network went smoothly as well. Calling, sending and receiving sms worked fine. The cameras (front and rear) works well for taking pictures (in colors!), but the preview is grayscaled and the app is crashing when I try to record video.

So now to the problems. Unnecessary to mention is that the wifi, bluetooth and GPS does not have any drivers (or I am actually not sure about the GPS… It is registered, but I have no apps to try it with yet). I have not been able to register for the data network service. This is the most critical issue that I need to have resolved sooner than later. A less critical issue, but still an issue, is that special codes for refilling my phone account and checking status, does not work. Worth mentioning may be that I use Swedish Telia Refill with 0.5 GB data transfer a month. The last problem I have encountered so far is that not having 3D acceleration enabled really slows down many of the features of Android.

I will probably not update this post, but rather write new ones as soon as I have new things to report. Stay tuned!

I wrote this letter to chess.com, regarding the fact that they have good chess video lessons that requires me to use the Flash player to watch them.

Hello chess.com,

I am a paying member of your service, and I love the game and all you are doing to it. I also would love being able to watch the video lessons for which I am also paying. However, as they require me to have the Flash player, I cannot watch them. Therefore, I am asking you to add a download link directly to the files instead, providing me with an optional way of retrieving the videos.

The reason why I cannot use the Flash player is because it is a proprietary program with an en user agreement I cannot accept. If you haven’t read it yet, please do! I am sure it will make you understand my situation. And, I can tell you, there are many people with me unable to use the Flash player of one reason or another.

The downloadable videos should be encoded with a codec that does not require a proprietary player. Ogg/Theora is a good choice. WebM is another.

Thank you for taking my request into consideration!

Best Regards,

Johan