Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

Posted Sep 12, 2012 21:03 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252)
In reply to: Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop by dlang
Parent article: Meeks: Linux on the (consumer) Desktop

the comms part is ALREADY a separate hardware module.

s/ALREADY/STILL/

The people who claim that phones have to be locked down for legal reasons just don't know what they are talking about.

Please stop mixing issues. The question was: will the hardware be open. And the answer is obvious: no, hardware can not be open for a legal reason.

Now, the talks about "separate hardware module" are all nice and good, but times are changing. Let's return to padfone, shell we. It's built around Qualcomm's MSM8260A. What is MSM8260A? Well, it's SOC which includes, CPU, GPU, BT 4.0, 802.11a/b/g/n (2.4/5 GHz), GSM, UMTS, DC-HSPA+, and TD-SCDMA. Basically everything you need to build a phone. But since you bundle together CPU and radio part you can not built open hardware around this. The best you can hope for is open software on main CPU and proprietary blob which drives the whole thing.

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