Neon Pinebook Remix as part of KDE

[Jonathan Riddell]

Seems nobody is too fussed about this and since KDE already has done
this for some years I'll release it

Jonathan


On 11 April 2018 at 14:18, Jonathan Riddell <jr at jriddell.org> wrote:
> Dearest KDE
>
> KDE neon is a project to bring KDE's software to the people by various
> convenient and rapid methods.  Recently we've been working on packages
> for the Pinebook [1].  Pinebook is a < $100 laptop using an ARM
> processor which will open up whole new markets to KDE software and
> computing generally as well as a great proof of concept of plasma on a
> really low profile device.  We have a real chance of having Plasma and
> other free software shipped on a laptop which will enable people to
> access digital freedom who otherwise would be offline.
>
> However it needs a proprietary driver for the graphics to work.  Neon
> is only building free software of course and the installable images as
> well as the Docker images and Snap packages we make are all 100% free
> software.  The packaging for the driver is hosted outside Neon and KDE
> infrastructure but of course it's needed for the images.  At the
> moment the Neon Pinebook Remix's installable images are built on
> Neon's servers but hosted on my private server.
>
> While the manifesto and licencing policy are clear that KDE projects
> must be free software it doesn't say anything about supporting drivers
> or build infrastructure for that software.  Plasma Active has shipped
> images with non-free firmware and drivers on for years
> (https://files.kde.org/plasma/active/4.0/images/nexus7/).
>
> How do we feel about shipping installable images with non-free
> supporting software?  The alternative is to drop and not ship any more
> images for Plasma Active or Mobile etc.
>
> Jonathan
>
> [1] https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707