The mailing list this is aimed at is https://trisquel.info/forum


This has taken much longer than I would have liked. I dread too think what your pressures are now. So here is my draft, tell me what you think and I'll send this out.


A side ways approche to getting the ideal free software computers

I love this company, I understand what they are trying to achive. I am a customer that interacts on the mailing list. I see you all go in cyicals about hardware that is free software respecting on this maling list. currently you keep on mententing products that an't from companys whos as a top goal/proiety of free software. The products mention are one off boxes. hock them up to a monitor and thats it, maybe build a board like the begal board into something, but, its going to bulky and difecult to upgrade. Remmember Always Innavating(not anymore) and there TouchBook, SmartBook? Bulky,non-free firmware usb wifi, One offs that didn't get very far. Good Idea but....!

Your goal is a computer that runs only free software, right? You'd like it to be from a biz that properly suports free software right? :)

Would you also like it too be upgradable by anybody? Would you also like too try many differt formfactors Would you like to not waste a hole device!!! just to get a faster one? Would you like kids to be able to learn hacking with the mass-produced(=cheep) computer card that they allready have, from a company with free software at it's heart? To be able to use and afford a (titamun(heck why not!),wooden,Ailuminamum,well made plastic,banboo, etc) laptop for 10years without being stuck with cpu,ram,grapics from 10years ago?

This Is Technolay that you love for ever!

Techhnolagy that suprots the devolpent of free sofware. that leads to free sofrtware societay, chaning the world with a decent platform to jump from,

I urge you to stop using up your time and moeny on same old prducts and instead put your god dam money where your mouth is and get around to pre-ording the first product! I have put my money where my mouth is. Here is the optunity for our dream to come ture. all it needs is us to kick start it, by starting the food chain by going too:

"Let's go change the world, or at the very least make some awesome hardware" - Luke K

How to achive computer hardware that is for free software and free hardware? Currenty it's been small companys that have made something. The product has been a compromis between lower specs,free or not free, price (expencive), small batchs, uncertian future, one-offs, proietary drivers or firmware for things like wifi. It takes a great effort to upgrade the speed or other components.

Here's a differnty way to get what we want.... Seporate the device from the computing. Create a Open -as in free(dom)- Specifation for a modulare, user upgradeable/swapable computing. With a standard set in stone for the next 10 years. with no optinal features no so no confusion. plug and play design.

What this means by going sideways is that the non-free camps can be satified and the free-only camps can have there dreams come true. both camps share the same devices/shells. the laptop casies, tablets, boxes, screens, ect,ect, whatever shell you can think of. the only thing that needs to be done to turn these devices/shells into a freesoftware only running computer is to design and make a computer card that has the SOC that we desire. Not another hole new laptop,games console,tabelt,portable computer,etc. Just one small computer card. All the existing and future devices are a free-software only computer just by swaping the computer card!

No more e-waste of a hole-new-deivce just for a faster little SOC. No more comsuming, limited globl resources at the same old wastfull level. Save money. As your going to buy more than one laptop in you 80year life.

More genuin virarity is far more pratical. as a device can be a simlpler 2 laye cirect board. that faverate laptop case can be going to be around of a long time in production. instread of verants with always some anyence - The perfect 10,11,12,13,14,15,16,18,19,20inch laptops can be achived.

The implications for the whole industry are very very profound. Just by a simple shift of putting computing onto tiny user-hot-swappable cards.

the revolution we're looking at really was not possible until the size, power consumption and CPU speed all crossed certain thresholds.

Everyone benifats.

Education: The child alreadly has a computer that has GPIO exposed. poke some wires in the end or to be safer/esaier order/borrow from school a little cheep devboard which just exposes the interfaces via there connectors. they can buy a cheep low spec computer card for more projects. hack there laptop maybe. in uni design and make a laptop.

Reguarding garphics and non-free yuck: all embedding computing/socs have non-free GPU's. the only current option is to reverse engneie them or to not have a GPU wich also means a slowwer soc(?). There is/was a optunity to make a new SOC that is a free software enfusests dream with seval million of funding.

We have made the first computer card and a partner; Make Play Live is selling it (preorder) with there Improv, a compact, credit-card sized board that the computer card plugs into which exposes the interfaces. The Improv can turn a screen/tv into a computer, media center, be a home server, DIY device, jukbox, etc. What do you want to improvise with the Improv? Next for upcomming pre-order is a 7inch tablet. when the case is finished. Swap your computer card into the tablet or buy another card.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4485207&cid=45523195 by foobar bazbot (3352433) on Tuesday November 26, 2013 @12:22AM (#45523195)

The whole idea of the EOMA concept should (if/when it takes off big) mean that you won't have to "hope the laptop shell's $ATTRIBUTE is $VALUE". There's two reasons for this.

First, you can build your own laptop, because a lot of the complexity that makes designing your own laptop mainboard a ridiculous proposition for almost every hobbyist is now inside the CPU card -- some professionals designed, built, and tested that 6-layer PCB, and then millions (eventually, in the big picture) were run off. For your special laptop, you could if you put your mind to it do most, if not everything, with a 2-side PCB and old-school through-hole components, the main obstacles being not that you can't fit it in a full-size laptop without SMT, but that you can't find some components in through-hole versions. You can pick whatever display you want, slightly tweak the PCB design from some other EOMA-68-based laptop to suit, and have one made. And all this is much more practical than it sounds because you invest the effort once, then keep that laptop for life (ok, realistically for a decade or more) and just swap CPU cards when you need more performance.

The other, and even bigger, reason, is because some manufacturer, somewhere, will make a shell with the characteristics you want. Sure, your concern might only occur in a fraction of a percent of consumer (actually, your concern about the backlight is IMO a horrible example, because the whole industry is moving from CCFL to LED for a number of reasons), but when some small Chinese factory is looking for a profitable niche to exploit, that fraction of a percent is a prime target. Because of EOMA, they (1) have less design work to do to make a new model (just like the hobbyist) (2) can keep selling that model without investing in a periodic redesign, and without it becoming obsolete and unsellable due to last the revolution we're looking at really was not possible until the size, power consumption and CPU speed all crossed certain thresholds. year's CPU -- just every year buy a load of the hot new CPU cards and receive a magic spec bump, or ship it without a CPU card and let the user slot their new or old card (3) even if/when they go out of business (or just abandon your market segment) and stop selling new shells, all the used ones keep going (until they break/wear out) without obsolescence. (1) and (2) mean less cost to pick up tiny market segments, which means niches will be more profitable and thus better served; (3) means that even if you're part of a niche market that looked big enough to make a good profit, but turned out not to be, you get to reap the benefits of some company's "mistake" in pursuing that niche long after the company's learned and moved on.

Regarding the last point particularly, contrast that to the Fujitsu U820 I bought a few years ago, because I really loved the form-factor and the high-PPI screen. At the time, the 1.6GHz Atom processor was slowish and the soldered-on RAM was cramped; it's flat-out obsolete now. The "successor" UH900 is a straight clamshell, lacking the flip-screen which lets the U820 become a paperback-sized tablet, and I'm left casting about amongst gadgets like the Asus Transformer series looking for a near-enough equivalent. If the U820 had been EOMA-based, then Fujitsu could go their way, selling UH900s with better mass-market appeal, but I the revolution we're looking at really was not possible until the size, power consumption and CPU speed all crossed certain thresholds. These thresholds have serpast! could keep going mine, swapping up to (say) a quad-core 1.8GHz ARM card in that same delightful chassis. Parent Share

›
Re:I hope the laptop shell's monitor is LED. (Score:3)
by lkcl (517947)

The whole idea of the EOMA concept should (if/when it takes off big)

mean that you won't have to "hope the laptop shell's $ATTRIBUTE is $VALUE".

you know what? whoever you are, foobar bazbot, i'm amazed and

delighted to see that you clearly Get this concept. there are a couple of things that you left out:

1) from a CPU Card manufacturer's perspective, they love the fact

that a short-lived SoC in a ready-to-go pre-packaged product can be sold in much bigger volume because it's shared - for the relatively shortallways duration that the SoC has its day - across potentially dozens of mass-volume products.

2) from your perspective (1) translates into cost savin

We do this by:

Hardware & Software We design a modable computer card open spec/standard. design products confermoning to that spec. We have partners that make the hardware. Inreturn we work with the libre software community to get working software thats free onto the hardware.

FS devs help do the software for a device and so we get friendly hardware and the factory does what it does best making hardware. Software Freedom is a long-term goal for qimod products.

Hardware that conforms with Free Software ideails means compermising in multiably ways or is small production-run and so expensive.n One offs with an unknow future for what your going to do when the time comes when your device breaks. only a choice of a few form factors with not the computing power you might prefer or need to do what you would like todo.

With EMOA, any device can be turned into a computer only running free software just by inserting a differt computer card. There are computerAs we Love Free Software, we'll suport free software by what we do. cards with the compremiss for the masses of a yucky GPU (a problem with all socs) but can run without the GPU as a free software system (at least computer cards made by QiMod) but theres the option of computer cards that conferm with the free software ideails, and when a new soc comes along. All that has to be done is make a small computer card and not a hole bloddy laptop. instead it wil go into the existing millons of devices. There was(?) the opssibilty of a spec of your dreams soc if some millons of funding where made avilable:

We work with the lesser of the evil socs. to get a blance between libre-software and cheep, mass-volume, good specs socs.

Our products/standards are a sulation for an organic garnden for organic software to grow. meaning what we do will always have libre-software first, instead of happening even just quendency run libre-software.

Making a Open/Free(dom) Specification standard for modular computers (the CPU/SOC part.) This moduaar cpu card leads towards computering that is lower in golbal resorces. This modula cpu card form factor is easy pease, lemon squisy for anybody (including grany) to swap, upgrade. dozens of times each day. They can swap there cpu card them selves!

Making hardware:

but first some back story: small projects,compernies make hardware. It's a lot of effort to make a device if your smaller. The big corps chuck out new hardware all the time with faster computing, a differt screen, maybe a high res one, differnt case style but the same end thing as the prev modaile. then the comsumer uses it for 2 years, maybe a few more years if it's lucky then the give money to those above for a new machine but its a hole new machine when they just needed it faster or more efficant -more battery time- as there needs have changed or maybe they just fancy a upgrade. This costs more long term -monertery-. It emidity costs 2x more for plant, the limited avilavle gobal resources, envoment. The clock ticks faster. #

What this means for you and some examples, Picture the posiablitys cus theres too many to list here, more than we can think of.

(Idea: micro blog, send your pics of your use, msgs of your uses to @ThereIEMOAedIt (playing on "There I hacked it"), #heresmyemoa #OhEMOA

Myemoa #IEMOA. Pronounced e-mo-a sounds like some quite cuddly thing.)

You want hardware with easy to use, play and play, stable, continently supported [1] by the community software right? Then thats what is hardware is able to lead too.

Allready 9*% of hardware work. 3D alcelleration/games will allways be a problem on arm due to arms and other coms stupid polices but reversengering work is being done and making progess

If they want a difernat form factors that also means buying more computing pwoer. You save say £60 per device by not duplcating compting power, swap your EMOA computer card.

Keep your EMOA computer card in your jackect pockert and plug-in to some ones elses big screen, projector, laptop, tablet,etc and get on with your work & play. Carry your computer where every you go on a whim and travel light at the same time.

Comparshion to other exsisting projects that won't be named: It's all very well "We want to change sucky UK computer education, oh and we'all plonk togeather a little computer, using a unfriendly corps soc who we used to work for and have a few mates in. a soc that wouldn't be chosen with a floss = edcation mind set. When you could instead put you money where your prefence is: How about changeing mass-volume computering gloably. oh btw this means hardware that provides new education optunitys like making a tablet,device in uni that is sold on the markect. hardware that you use day to day but can also slot in to your quriocoptor bot, or your firework electronic ignonshion system or a line folwing bot or just playing about with GPIO to do things like hocking up a button and a led. Have a leaner board that is stuffed full of GPIO, thanks to a ardunio-like chip, which means you could run ardunio progams on it. Just plug you computer card into the board to hockup you project to a computer for things like a web interface or sound,etc. then remove the computer card back into your laptop when your done. or buy a cheep low spec computer card for your project for something more peramenty. No longer do you have the pain of unwiring to remove the computer to use it in another project. With the help of a simple board with the connector on it you can play & play dozzens of times a day.

This is our chance... Do you wa'n dance? Lets take our chance....

[1]not suported for say 2 years and dumped like andriod,bapple,etc tablets. or no years in the case of the cheep GPL voliating (bad will to the FLOSS comunity) -Grrr!- android running tablets.

“ To combine British innovation, plus European sales expertise, with Chinese engineering and manufacturing excellence to produce highly desirable and saleable high technology goods. To utilise this cross-cultural synergy alongside QiMOD Design skills in ways that simplify Software Development. The result is faster times to market with industry-leading devices that are low-power, low-cost and high value. ”