Two examples of abandoned hardware [LWN.net]

Two examples of abandoned hardware

Posted Apr 12, 2007 3:25 UTC (Thu) by joey (subscriber, #328)
Parent article: Two examples of abandoned hardware

This is why I want to run fully free software distributions (ideally Debian) on embedded hardware. The N800 also has several proprietary bits, see <http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/openmoko_and_n800/dis...>

BTW, you missed the example of the OpenMoku project which is being very careful to develop their embedded system using fully free software.

(Disclaimer: I work for a company that develops embedded systems running Debian.)

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Two examples of abandoned hardware

Posted Apr 12, 2007 4:54 UTC (Thu) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

In related, rather surprising news, the Zaurus 5500 might be viable again. The problem was its proprietary SD/MMC card reader. Sharp's closed source driver doomed the 5500 to only run Linux kernel 2.4. Since all other Zaurus devices had moved to 2.6 and 2.4 support was being dropped, it looked like the end of the line for the venerable 5500.

Yesterday Thomas Kunze announced on oz-devel that he'd managed to write a SD driver for it. Amazing! If it works, this piece of hardware that I bought in 2002 will continue to be a viable device.

Proprietary bits might not seem very bad now but, as N770 owners are discovering, they'll bite you eventually. I pity anyone who spent $400 on an N770. I can't imagine being told only 1.5 years later that the device is end-of-lifed. Personally, I'd be furious!

Two examples of abandoned hardware

Posted Apr 13, 2007 16:31 UTC (Fri) by ken_i_m (guest, #4938) [Link]

Well, I am mad as I got an N770 as an xmas gift less than four months ago. I was unaware that the N800 was forth coming and that Nokia would abandon the N770 so soon.

I am very tired of getting burned by hardware vendors. High on the list is Linksys who changes chipsets from one supported by open source driver to one not without changing the model name or packaging in any way that would indicate that it is a different piece of hardware on the inside.

HP printers are another pain. HP makes a lot of noise about supporting CUPS. Yet a few months ago I bought a new printer only to find that it does not work very well (I have to power cycle the printer after every print job). Needless to say, if I connect it to my dual-boot system it works great under Windows. :-(

I have an ATI 9200 video card in my desktop system and will be moving it to my new desktop box that I am building. I refuse to buy another card without open source support.

Two examples of abandoned hardware

Posted Apr 14, 2007 18:55 UTC (Sat) by eli (guest, #11265) [Link]

In related, rather surprising news, the Zaurus 5500 might be viable again.

Yesterday Thomas Kunze announced on oz-devel that he'd managed to write a SD driver for it.

As a 5500 owner, this is a big deal to me. I had to do a bit of hunting to find the messages referenced, so for others, the openzaurus-devel thread.