Hi, I've stripped non-Free firmware bits from Fedora kernels for F8 and rawhide, starting from tools developed by the gNewSense folks and now in use by BLAG developers, and built alternate kernels that I've successfully booted up and used on my x86_64 notebook. You'd be surprised at how little it takes to get to a Free Software kernel. It's just a few drivers that need firmware removed. Nevertheless, I may have tentatively removed too much, and I'd appreciate if someone would defend some of the bits I removed to be on the safe (freedom-wise) side. The first experimental kernels should be landing at http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/snapshots/kernel-libre soon. The version for Fedora 8 is based on 2.6.24.3-51 (one SCSI patch on top of the just-released 2.6.24.3-50). The version for devel is based on 2.6.25-0.139.rc6.git5 in CVS. Once I get some positive feedback and I'm happy with this arrangement, I'll figure out how to track and number kernel-libre such that the version it's based on becomes entirely obvious, and then I'll submit it for integration into Fedora proper. I realize it's a bit late for Fedora 9, but if it can be added to CVS, this will already make things much easier. And then, once it's in CVS, and considering that it doesn't add features (if anything, it removes features, unless you count the possibility of 100% freedom as a feature, like me :-), maybe it could go into Fedora 9, and maybe even Fedora 8. Have fun, and please send feedback my way. If you respond to the list, please Cc: me such that I don't miss the answers in all the traffic of this list. Private replies are fine as well. Thanks, -- Alexandre Oliva http://www.lsd.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/ FSF Latin America Board Member http://www.fsfla.org/ Red Hat Compiler Engineer aoliva@{redhat.com, gcc.gnu.org} Free Software Evangelist oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org} -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
