d-cubes, open pc and openpandora - cool?

[Bernhard Reiter]

There are a number of small endeavours to produce hardware
ideal for Free Software. Does anyone have experience with:

http://www.d-cubes.be/
Belgian mini-company selling mini-computer: light and mini

http://open-pc.com/
A community for building an open pc, three sellers, three designs:
Open-PC "1", "Micro" and "XS".

http://openpandora.org/index.php?lang=en
A handheld with a gaming focus, but basically a mini-pc.

Maybe they need more promotion?
--
FSFE -- Deputy Coordinator Germany (fsfeurope.org)
Your donation makes our work possible: www.fsfeurope.org/help/donate.en.html
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[Federico Bruni]

Post by Bernhard Reiter
There are a number of small endeavours to produce hardware
http://www.d-cubes.be/
Belgian mini-company selling mini-computer: light and mini

interesting... I'm currently looking for a silent and compact mini PC
which fully supports GNU/Linux

unfortunately this experience lasted 5 months, they stopped their
activities (read the news in homepage)

Post by Bernhard Reiter
http://open-pc.com/
Open-PC "1", "Micro" and "XS".

this is still active
I just wonder if it really works with *free* drivers... anyone have
detailed information about it?

Post by Bernhard Reiter
Maybe they need more promotion?

The FSF is replacing this list:
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw

with a community-driven database:
http://www.h-node.com/
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Directory_Migration

h-node needs more promotion as well.

Cheers,
Federico

[Bernhard Reiter]

Post by Federico Bruni

Post by Bernhard Reiter
http://www.d-cubes.be/
Belgian mini-company selling mini-computer: light and mini

unfortunately this experience lasted 5 months, they stopped their
activities (read the news in homepage)

I wasn't sure about it, as I do not understand French well.
This is why I'd asked about experience, I was hoping that someone had already
bought the hardware. The openpandora is a bit hard to get as well, as far as
I can tell. :)
--
FSFE -- Deputy Coordinator Germany (fsfeurope.org)
Your donation makes our work possible: www.fsfeurope.org/help/donate.en.html
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[Michael Kesper]

Hi,

Post by Federico Bruni
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw
http://www.h-node.com/
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Directory_Migration
h-node needs more promotion as well.

And they should provide a simple one-step-solution to identify one's PC.
Maybe they could use Smolt [0]?

Best wishes
Michael
--
Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) [] (http://fsfe.org)
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[Guido Arnold]

Hello,

Post by Federico Bruni
interesting... I'm currently looking for a silent and compact mini PC
which fully supports GNU/Linux

Maybe this can help you:
https://wiki.fsfe.org/Hardware_vendors

Good luck!

Greetings,

Guido

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[Hugo Roy]

Hi Bernhard,

Post by Bernhard Reiter
http://www.d-cubes.be/
Belgian mini-company selling mini-computer: light and mini

Yes, we contacted them already. I don't know if we met them yet.
They donate an important part of their profit to FSFE.

Best,

[micu]

Hi Bernhard,

Post by Bernhard Reiter
There are a number of small endeavours to produce hardware

Not with these, sorry.

I know somebody who owns a "fit-PC 2" [1], which is really cool in terms
of power consumption. It is cool as a device, as well, but I don't know
how easy it is to get a free driver running on it (it has one of the few
graphics chips that don't come with a free driver by intel :().

The Jetway J8F9 [2] is a really cute device, it doesn't consume a lot of
power neither, and it does run with free drivers. But it is really slow
--- resulting from its Geode CPU.

The Cirrus7 One [3, sorry: link in German] looks really neat to me. It
comes with GNU/Linux preinstalled. Does anyone know whether it runs well
with free drivers?

Oh yeah, there are many nice devices running with free software...
...and I am not answering your questions ;)

The thing I'd love to see: A cool low power somewhat embedded GNU/Linux
PC with an ARM CPU --- there would be plenty of them on the market
already, if people wouldn't always demand proprietary Windows... :/

Regards,
micu
==================================
[1] <http://linux.bigga.de/blog/blog-post/2010/05/15/tiny-fit-pc-2-replacing-old-desktop-pc/>
[2] <http://linux.bigga.de/blog/blog-post/2009/05/25/using-xorg-geode-driver-on-jetway-j8f9/>
[3] <http://www.linux-community.de/Internal/Artikel/Print-Artikel/LinuxUser/2011/05/Kleiner-und-
leiser-Mini-PC-mit-Ubuntu-Support>

[Bernhard Reiter]

Post by micu

Post by Bernhard Reiter
There are a number of small endeavours to produce hardware

Not with these, sorry.
Oh yeah, there are many nice devices running with free software...
...and I am not answering your questions ;)

I intentionally pointed towards initiatives as opposed to specific
hardware or a set of configurations.

Post by micu
The thing I'd love to see: A cool low power somewhat embedded GNU/Linux
PC with an ARM CPU --- there would be plenty of them on the market
already, if people wouldn't always demand proprietary Windows... :/

As you are correctly pointing out: Demand is important for driving the market.
This is why making a fresh new enterprise or inititive more successful
could be a way to better use our power as buyers. Especially if this is an
initiative geared towards community and Free Software.

Best,
Bernhard
--
FSFE -- Deputy Coordinator Germany (fsfeurope.org)
Your donation makes our work possible: www.fsfeurope.org/help/donate.en.html
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[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

Post by Bernhard Reiter
http://open-pc.com/
Open-PC "1", "Micro" and "XS".

The idea sounds kinda interesting; but visiting their site was a major
WTF?! experience for me. Supposedly it's "open", yet I'm unable to find
any information about who decided what and when; nor any useful
information about the final product -- either the hardware or the
software.

(After half an hour or so I found some random link to a wiki, which is
almost empty (apart from spam), but at least has some information about
the software. Still nothing for the hardware.)

Post by Bernhard Reiter
http://openpandora.org/index.php?lang=en
A handheld with a gaming focus, but basically a mini-pc.

This is a pretty amazing project... But one of the main features they
boast is the SGX 3D core, for which no free drivers are available. In
view of this, I don't think we can fully endorse it either...

-antrik-