Computers
Parabola x86_64 and i686 support computers with x86 CPUs quite thoroughly and relatively easily. Because those computers are highly homogeneous, they can be supported without any computer-specific packages (boot-loaders, firmware, etc) or installation guides. For that reason, almost any of them will work well with Parabola, and the installation procedure is generic. These are by far, the most common computers today; but they are not very libre-friendly, hacker-friendly, or repair-friendly machines.
Parabola has basic support for many other (non-x86) computers (those with ARM, POWER, and RISC-V CPUs); but those are much more heterogeneous. Typically, they require special attention to be supported fully by a distro, and the procedure for installing an OS is not as simple. They are however, generally much more libre-friendly and hackable/repairable. Many of them have "open" hardware schematics available for hackers, and have little or no opaque firmware, or "closed" specialty hardware, which the owner can not inspect or control.
Because of the huge number and variety of "exotic" computers, Parabola can not claim to support them all, as completely as the more common x86-based computers. In addition to basic software support, Parabola maintains this list, and detailed install guides for a small set of those computers, which are deemed to be highly desirable from a software/hardware freedom perspective, and are designated with high-priority support status. Given that most of the available options are comparable in computing power and cost, differing mainly in minutia, obscured with technical jargon, this limited set of recommended hardware, also helps users to decide among such a bewildering assortment of options.
Contents
1 Parabola recommended computers, with priority support
The following computers are deemed to be highly desirable from a software/hardware freedom perspective, and are designated with high-priority support status by the Parabola team. Each of these are in the possession of at least one active Parabola team member; which is an essential requisite for bug-triage, trouble-shooting, and bug-squashing.
| Single-Board Computers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Maker | CPU | Notes |
| A20-OLinuXino-LIME | Olimex | ARM 32bit (A20) | RYF Certifiable, nonfree ssd/microSD firmwares |
| A20-OLinuXino-LIME2 | Olimex | ARM 32bit (A20) | RYF Certifiable, nonfree ssd/microSD firmwares (gen-2 and gen-3 - we do not yet have a gen-1). This is the main board in the FreedomBox (gen-2) and Lime2 Server (gen-3) boxes; so the FreedomBox and Lime2 Server are also fully-supported by Parabola. |
| BeagleBone Black | BeagleBoard.org Foundation, Texas Instruments | ARM 32bit (AM335x) | Free boot, nonfree ssd/microSD firmwares, non-working: 3D, video decoding, PRUs, capes |
| Laptops | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Maker | CPU | Notes |
| Chromebook C201 | Asus | ARM 32bit (which model?) | Supports Libreboot - No libre driver for internal wifi |
| Thinkpad X60 | Lenovo | x86 32bit | Supports Libreboot |
| Thinkpad X200 | Lenovo | x86 64bit | Supports Libreboot |
| Thinkpad T400 | Lenovo | x86 64bit | PROS: RYF certified, Supports Libreboot, Sold in libre shops, with libreboot+parabola pre-installed CONS: No libre driver for factory wifi (but it is replaceable) |
| Thinkpad T500 | Lenovo | x86 64bit | PROS: RYF certified, Supports Libreboot, Sold in libre shops, with libreboot+parabola pre-installed CONS: No libre driver for factory wifi (but it is replaceable) |
| Smartphones | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Maker | CPU | Notes |
| None yet | |||
1.1 Things that are not supported yet
There are some things that are not supported yet for the ARM computers we support:
- Booting from a GPT partitioned storage device (we'd need to add support for it in the u-boot packages (like uboot4extlinux-sunxi) and the installation instructions).
- Modifications to the device tree, for instance with device tree fragments. We need to find how to make u-boot pick them up with the boot schemes we use. This prevents supporting some peripherals that are not auto-detected (like LCD displays that are connected through LVDS or parallel connectors) or from using certain pin configuration (like to enable SPI on the pin headers of BeagleBone Black/Green for instance).
2 Laptops and Single-Board Computers which are usable with 100% Free Software
The following computers have been reported, by their owners, to be fully-functional or mostly-functional with 100% Free Software operating systems such as Parabola. However, they are not designated with high-priority support status, because none of the Parabola developers has one. For this reason, Parabola can not guarantee the accuracy of this section. We rely on the community to maintain this section. Please modify any information, which you believe would be more accurate; and add any laptops, which you are certain are fully-functional with any libre distro.
The h-node website has a similar list of laptops; but note that only those designated with compatibility: 'A-Platinum' and 'B-Gold', have all hardware components working with 100% Free Software.
2.1 Fully-functional Laptops
| x86 Laptops | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Maker | CPU | Notes |
| Asus F7L | Asus | x86 64bit (Intel Pentium Mobile T2390) | Non-free boot. Tested with Parabola. |
| Asus L210 | Asus | x86 64bit (Intel Celeron N4020) | Non-free boot. Tested with Trisquel. |
2.2 Mostly-functional Laptops
| ARM Laptops | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Maker | CPU | Notes |
| Pinebook Pro | Pine64 | ARM 64bit (RK3399 - A72 + A53) | Free boot, WiFi non working, DPTX firmware is nonfree, No external display, has eMMC or NVMe PCIe (so has DMA access at least at boot). Using eMMC is posssible instead. The nvme connector may be repurposable to add an ath9k on it (untested, requires adapter on the forum). |
2.3 Fully-functional Single-Board Computers
| Single-Board Computers | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Maker | CPU | Notes |
| BananaPi M1 | LeMaker | ARM 32bit (A20) | Tested with Parabola. |
3 Other interesting computers
The computers on this list were deemed to be interesting enough to justify investigation. However, they are not yet designated with high-priority support status, because none of the Parabola developers has one, or some work remains to support them.
| Model | Maker | CPU | Notes | Rationale | Status |
| BeagleBone Green | BeagleBoard.org Foundation, Seeed Studio | ARM 32bit (AM335x) | No display connector | Works fine but needs to create a device page for it (and maybe update the ARM installation guide?) | |
| TBS2910 Matrix ARM mini PC | TBS | ARM 32bit (I.MX6) | Free boot, no WiFi, no video decoding | Works fine but needs to complete installation instructions | |
| TERES Laptop | Olimex | ARM 64bit (A53) | Initial revision has 2GB RAM. The manual suggests that future revisions will have various memory capacities. Wifi is non-free; but this is a DIY kit and has USB ports, so the owner can easily yank it. Note from Olimex: "It's same as A64-OLinuXino-2Ge8G-IND software-wise, but has some other features regarding the power supply and low power modes (unfortunately they are taken from Android and binary blobs)." | Add more libre laptops - Relatively libre-friendly; so probably easy to support. | ??? |
| Talos II | Raptor Engineering | PPC64LE | RYF, no FSDG distros for the BMC or the PPC64LE | Add support for ppc64le + RYF hardware (may need separate articles for each: Talos II / Talos II Lite / Talos Blackbird ) | partially-working |
| Beagle-V | BeagleBoard.org Foundation, Seeed Studio | RISC-V 64bit (U74) | No libre firmware for wifi | Appears to be very libre-friendly and relatively powerful | working |
| T2080RDB-PC | NXP | PPC64LE | Probably free boot, no display controller - The nouveau and radeon drivers depend on data/bytecode in the Video BIOS. Is that bytecode data or also code? | Add more ppc64le computers - easier to work with than Talos | ??? |
| GNU/Linux PowerPC Notebook - https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ | TBA/collaborative | PPC64LE | Probably free boot, no display controller - The nouveau and radeon drivers depend on data/bytecode in the Video BIOS. Is that bytecode data or also code? | Add more libre laptops - Add more ppc64le computers | Proposed, not in production |
| HiFive1 Rev B | SiFive | RISC-V 32bit (E31) | Requires blobs | Add support for RISCV | partially-working |
| HiFive Unmatched | SiFive | RISC-V 64bit (U74) | Add support for RISCV | Pre-order, not in production | |
| Board with ECP 5 + LiteX | TBA/collaborative | PPC64LE | Expected to be 100% libre (HW/SW) | Go way beyond RYF: free HDL design + FPGA, but slow | (some) support in Linux |
| Jetson TK1 | NVIDIA | ARM 32bit (A15) | Both Tegra K1 and Tegra X1 has nonfree nouveau firmwares (but no video BIOS as that's in the kenrel). The Tegra X1 has a signed (power management only?) firmware for the GPU though. | Support Tegra, free bootloader | ??? |
| Novena | Sutajio Ko-usagi | ARM 64bit (i.MX) | Free boot, almost everything working. The FPGA is probably supported by the free toolchain but lacks some blocks like DSP and so on. As with other I.MX6: nonfree video decoding acceleration. It also has a free EC and so exist in desktop versions. | Add more libre laptops - Slow but has SATA, mPCIe, 4GiB of RAM, and so on - It appear that production of the cases is discontinued; and only the mainboard is still available. | requires patches |
| EOMA68 | Rhombus-Tech | ARM 32bit (A20) | Non-free eMMC/uSD firmwares. TODO: look if the cases and accessories will be shipped or not. | RYF Certifiable - Add more libre laptops | Pre-order, not in production. UART access probably requires patching. |
| MIPS Creator CI20 | Imagination | MIPS 32bit (JZ4780) | Boots with free software, GPU not working - https://elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20 | Bring back the MIPS port? | ??? |
| LibreCMC compatible WiFi AP with USB port | (any ?) | MIPS (which one?) | Boots with free software | WiFi Access points in Parabola, bring back MIPS support? | Some probably have their DTS upstream. |
| APU1 | PcEngines | x86 64bit | Works fine | Nonfree SMU firmware, free replacement needs testing and packaging, needs to be added to Libreboot after fixing that. | |
| APU2 | PcEngines | x86 64bit (AMD G GX-412TC) | Sucessor of the PcEngine APU1 | More powerful than APU1, long-term production | huge nonfree software in Coreboot (nonfree AGESA) |
| GTA04 | Golden Delicious | ARM 32bit (DM370?) | Free vendor u-boot, good Linux support - TODO: get support in u-boot | works with parabola (but only with custom bootloader) | ??? |
| Chromebook Plus | Samsung | ARM 64bit (???) | ??? | ??? | ??? |
| RockPro64 | Pine64 | ARM 64bit (RK3399 - A72 + A53) | Free boot, Non-free WiFi, DPTX firmware is nonfree, No external display, has eMMC or NVMe PCIe (so has DMA access at least at boot). Using eMMC is possible instead. The NVMe connector may be repurposable to add an ath9k on it (untested, requires adapter on the forum). This is the main board in the Pinebook Pro. | The Pinebook Pro is known to work with parabola. If the Pinebook Pro is promoted to priority support, this board could go along with it. | ??? |
| Cubieboard2 | CubieBoard | ARM 32bit (A20 - A7) | Supported by freedombox in debian main. | ??? | |
| Cubieboard3 (Cubietruck) | CubieBoard | ARM 32bit (A20 - A7) | Non-free wifi (BCM4329/BCM40181). | Supported by freedombox in debian main. | ??? |
| pcDunino3 | LinkSprite | ARM 32bit (A20 - A7) | Non-free wifi. | Supported by freedombox in debian main. | ??? |
| Pine A64+ | Pine64 | ARM 64bit (A64 - A53) | Supported by freedombox in debian main. | ??? | |
| Banana Pro | LeMaker | ARM 32bit (A20 - A7) | Unknown wifi status. | Supported by freedombox in debian main. | ??? |
| Orange Pi Zero | Orange Pi | ARM 32bit (H2 - A7) | Non-free wifi. | Supported by freedombox in debian main. | ??? |
| Rock64 | Pine64 | ARM 64bit (RK3328 - A53) | Supported by freedombox in debian main. | ??? | |
| RK3328-SOM | Olimex | ARM 64bit (RK3328 - A53) | No wifi - 1-4 GB RAM | Same SoC as Rock64 | ??? |
