>From my limited knowledge on licensing agreements, I think as long as there >are no restrictions on redistribution from the original people who provide the >firmware, it can be freely redistributed as long as the firmware isn't >decompiled or disassembled.
I don't know, off hand, of any manufacturers that have any firmware limitations in licenses other than disassembly and decompiling. Sent from my Windows Phone ________________________________ From: Apollia<mailto:apollia...@gmail.com> Sent: 6/5/2015 4:07 PM To: dng@lists.dyne.org<mailto:dng@lists.dyne.org> Subject: [Dng] Puppy Linux, Devuan Puppy & hardware - Re: straw poll, non-free firmware for installers I already posted a little about Puppy Linux in the past - but, it seems appropriate and particularly on topic to mention it again now, because, at least from my not-very-technical perspective, one of Puppy Linux's strengths appears to be compatibility with a wide variety of hardware, usually without requiring the users to fiddle with settings much or at all. With Puppy, the most elaborate thing I ever had to do to make some hardware work was compile and install a driver for a USB wireless internet adapter. (Oh, and then there were the things I was only able to figure out how to use with a Windows XP VirtualBox rather than natively in Linux - a scanner and an HPNA internet adapter.) Puppy (at least the Puppies I tried) unfortunately doesn't tell you if it's using anything non-free, nor give you the option to exclude those non-free things. But, other than that, it has usually been close to ideal for me. I haven't tried it with an incredibly wide variety of hardware, but it has usually worked fine with most things I tried, even some rather surprising things, like old Macs. :-) Maybe Puppy has some hardware-related scripts or something which Devuan could use or modify? I don't know many details, but there is apparently already Devuan support in woof-CE, the community edition of the software used to build Puppy Linuxes. This page is from last April: https://github.com/puppylinux-woof-CE/woof-CE/pull/528 I don't know if anyone has yet released a Devuan-based Puppy ISO. But, if I understand correctly, woof-CE is the software anyone can now use to build such an ISO. Maybe stuff from that could be used in Devuan itself? As for how Puppy deals with legal issues related to distributing non-free firmware - I haven't been able to find many details so far just from searching the web. But, on the blog of Barry Kauler (creator of Puppy Linux), there's a post from May 17, 2008 where he writes: http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=00099 "Anyway, I now have compiled 'slusb.ko' but apparently I can't legally put it into Puppy for distribution. I have mumbled some appropriate expletives, won't type them here." So, judging by that, I assume Puppy probably is mindful of such issues and probably follows the law, yet still manages to do a good job of being compatible with a wide variety of hardware. One of my top suggestions for a specific, existing Puppy distro to look at and maybe use stuff from would be Wary Puppy, since it's specifically designed to be compatible with old hardware. http://distro.ibiblio.org/quirky/wary-5.5/release-Wary-5.5.htm Wary is the Puppy that worked best for me on an old computer that even some somewhat recent Puppies didn't work quite right on - a Toughbook CF-28 whose screen blacked out after X started while running Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 and Slacko 5.7. If I recall correctly, the worst problem I had with the CF-28 and Wary was that the CF-28's touchscreen wasn't properly calibrated out of the box (and I never figured out how to calibrate it). My other top suggestion would be Lighthouse 64 Puppy 6.02 Beta 2, my favorite of all the 64-bit Puppies I've tried. http://www.lhpup.org/ - Lighthouse 64 Puppy's home page I was astonished when I was able to get Puppy to work on some old Macs, with very little trouble at all (if I recall correctly) - just by booting from a CD or DVD. I actually was able to use Lighthouse 64 Puppy 6.02 Beta 2 on a 2008 Mac Pro desktop! A model of Mac that some describe as being like a giant cheese grater. :-) http://www.souledesigns.com/blog/2013/06/mac-pro-kitchen-nightmare And I got both Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 and I think also a Lighthouse Puppy (forgot what version) to boot on a MacBook from 2009. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=70855 Official discussion thread for Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 Another nice thing about Lighthouse 64 Puppy 6.02 Beta 2 is that right out of the box, it somehow manages to perfectly calibrate the touchscreen of my Toughbook CF-C1 (a newer and far less rugged Toughbook than the CF-28). No other Puppy I tried did that, though at least the touchscreen somewhat worked, even though I couldn't figure out how to calibrate it. (Actually, I might only have tried one other Puppy with the CF-C1 - Lucid Puppy 5.2.8.) Anyway, I hope this helps. I guess I'll go back to being mostly quiet again, since I can't think of much else to say besides praise, thanks, and things like "I agree". :-) Thanks to everyone for all your wonderful efforts! Best wishes, Apollia
_______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
_______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
