kernel-libre (hopefully 100% Free) for Fedora 8 and rawhide

[Alexandre Oliva]

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}