Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
This is certainly a very interesting and welcome development. So go a long way to prevent thieves and governments from exploiting insecurities in the majority of consumer closed source routers. I think I will have to buy one:) Richard
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
I think they're not doing that any more.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Cool. You may want to edit the URL in your opening post too. I wonder if it would help you if I purchased a Netgear WNDR3800 from another vendor and tested libreCMC on that? I'd prefer to buy from you, but I'd have to pay import duty and the network interface on the router you're currently selling is a little slow for my needs.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Unfortunately, The first post of a thread can't be modified in this forum software.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Christ Well people there you have it, a Libre-router for a libre GNU-Linux OSI. Even do, personally I have not tested yet and this is my opinion, having this kind of router, basically it saying YOU have your own very private WiFi. Christ, correct me If I'm wrong. Lets take in consideration, that even If you are using any of the FSF OSI. not all WiFi nick cards are going to be compatible, due to strict guidelines in avoiding non-free firmware and non-free binary code restrictions.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Chris Question about this router? Does the router has the feature to edit a splash WWW page link? Actually, I do host my own Web page privately. My old Cisco Links WiFi, that I um-brick is using LibreWRT, It has that feature. Basically, when anyone logs into my WiFi, the welcome page Pops.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Chris and Christ are not the same thing. Chris is short for the male given name Christopher. Christ is the title which was given to Jesus of Nazareth (the guy who supposedly started Christianity). I'd fix this habit of yours if I were you, because Christ is also an interjection indicating anger/annoyance/disappointment of some kind, and that's kind of what it looks like in this particular post. Also, OSI is Open Source Initiative. Very different from OS: operating system. ;)
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Unsure. It's probably got it or could be added. Again it's derived from OpenWRT basically which is the same thing LibreWRT is based on, but with more up to date components.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
I can't see any harm in it. Not sure if its going to work for you or not. The key thing is that its using the atheros ath9k chipsets I believe. Though there may be other issues besides this even if it works.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
While I think I agree with the sentiment it's probably not as bad as it sounds. The problem with Trisquel is that there are a few components which need to be backported in order to have support for the most recent hardware. Trisquel 6 would be fine if only it had a few other components updated more often: kernel, xserver, hplip, and possibly a few others. CentOS has done a pretty decent job with getting support for modern hardware and it's significantly older than anything else around. Canonical's got the resources to make that happen too. It's begun backporting various hardware critical components as well such as the xserver and kernel. Ubuntu 12.04.4 actually works with most recent hardware. Trisquel potentially could too if we could get more money going into the project. As it is Rubén just has had other employment opportunities getting in the way. That's changed and as such he'll be spending a lot more time on Trisquel. However he shouldn't get stuck without an income and have to beg for food/handouts/a roof over his head. He isn't going to do that. I know that much. A lot of other developers won't either.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
That's not the same issue. It's a bug.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
There are two parts here. One is my perspective in at least how it relates to ThinkPenguins and one is RISCis. From RISCis perspective I think it is best summed up as things weren't going the way he wanted them to. Other people involved wanted to take things in a different direction (I forget exactly what it was, but it wasn't just a bleeding edge issue). From a practical perspective that direction didn't work for ThinkPenguin. RISCi's reasons for wanting to go in a different direction differ from mine as it related to ThinkPenguin though. The reason ThinkPenguin has not released a router based on LibreWRT is that the code base has become difficult to work on, dated, and become unworkable for all practical purposes. Before RISCi made an attempt to get LibreWRT working with a modern router there was another experienced developer who attempted to make LibreWRT work for ThinkPenguin on a modern router. Both he and RISCi failed. Two people with experience and working independently of each other failed. One of them being an original developer. So to sum it up I tried working with LibreWRT in regards to getting a router in the ThinkPenguin catalog. We had no problem getting it to work on one particular supported router. That router wasn't an option. I don't believe we could get that router a year or two ago let alone today. Long story short the code base appears to be a mess, dated, and problematic. Right now LibreCMC is essentially LibreWRT v2 for all intensive purposes. RISCi basically repeated what he did for LibreWRT, but based it off a more recent upstream code base (OpenWRT, just like LibreWRT is). The LibreCMC code base is on gitorious (see link at librecmc.org) and if the LibreWRT developers wanted to participate I doubt RISCi would have a problem with that. It's why its on gitorious. RISCi believes in public and community development as much as I do. The only thing I have to say about others participating is it's going to go in the direction RISCi and/or the money that helps fund it allows (and by that I basically mean that if people shell out for a $50 router we can't focus development on a $150 router). That might not be the direction its users like, but if your not willing to contribute/finance it there isn't much we can do. Developers have to eat too! Next. We've been working with the ProteanOS lead developer on other projects and I've talked to him about his embedded distribution. From the sound of it the key difference between ProteanOS and LibreWRT/LibreCMC is that its built from the ground up. That's great if you have the resources to do that. My concern with ProteanOS is that it's too ambitious and there is no realistic long term maintenance plan. There is a reason small successful projects don't build from the ground up. It's more work. It can also be counter productive. It's better to fork and/or work with developers upstream than build everything from scratch particularly if you don't have the resources to do that. When lead developers get kicked out of their dwellings (ie parents home, government funded housing, or because they don't have the money to pay rent) they have to find real jobs and those jobs end development of projects like this. Just look at Trisquel's slow development this past year. It's a perfect example. The same can in part be said for LibreWRT (in my humble opinion). If we're going to fix these issues we need to bring in money to help feed / house developers. I think we can do that with LibreCMC. I'm not convinced that's possible with LibreWRT or ProteanOS. Here is why I think this too. It didn't take a significant amount of time and energy to produce LibreCMC. Relatively speaking anyway. That means even a little bit of funding could make it feasible to continue its maintenance/upkeep. The reality is that there aren't that many people willing to contribute financially or able to do the work. The unwilling / unable (ie the masses) tend to buy cheaper routers though and if you can ship such a router you can start to fix this problem. That's why we're focusing on a modern low end router. Not the $150 router. Not exciting? Not interesting? Nothing I can do about that. I don't see how we could realistically come up with enough funding to keep an embedded distribution like ProteanOS going with this business model. It might be some large company wants to fund it. However I don't know which company would or why. Nor do I know where to look. What I do know is LibreCMC solves a problem ThinkPenguin has and in turn can fund development. LibreWRT didn't. ProteanOS maybe would too if not for the development cost. This is the harsh reality as I see it.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
First of all this isn't one router really. There are different versions of this router like most routers and it all depends on which version your talking about. I believe that if LibreWRT was more up to date than some of these routers would probably work. It's likely that LibreCMC will work with some of these routers.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
That's exactly what I've been saying all along, because of all the fragmentation, we have very smart people all working on the same thing and in turn it results in less work done as what they're all doing redundant, we have people doing jobs that are already done elsewhere. What's more, I'm not programmer, all i can do is use the software as it's made and donate to projects that I support, but when there are 10 projects all doing essentially the same thing, just slightly different, it's hard for me to support one project, as donating makes no difference is speeding up development. At best all it does is buys a programmer somewhere a coffee. I think it would be better to support one or two programmers who could devote a lot of time to a project than 100 programmers who only get enough money for a coffee from time to time. If the community could work together, under one project and everyone donated to that one there'd be more work done. And if the FSF would back one good OS and pitch in and help that would be even better, the community could get a lot done. But as it is now there are just too many projects, too little time and in turn the free software communities software is always outdated and only supports the old stuff compared to other projects with commercial backing, like Ubuntu. Diversity is good, but being too diverse is harmful, especially for a community as small as the free software movement.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Free software does support the new stuff - for instance Parabola supports new hardware. The only reason Trisquel doesn't is because it is based on Ubuntu so it is always released after Ubuntu. And as I said before I think this is not one of free software's main issues as one can always use older hardware (there is no real reason to buy a computer with hardware that came out this year).
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
But I'm saying there's no real reason why you shouldn't be able to buy new hardware if you really want it. Every day people are not going to go out and get an older computer especially when theirs should work, and do work with systems like Parabola. All I'm saying is it's unfortunate that it takes so long for Trisquel to catch up with Ubuntu and it's because it's a big job and there is just not enough support, so the community should make the most of what they have and not fragment so much. That is all. Parabola is not a solution for most people, and Debian is not either as they are either harder to use or don't do as good a job at keeping systems free. That's why we need a distro that is easy and keeps up with good hardware when it's available.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
If you buy new hardware it usually requires more work to get working than hardware that is say 2 years old and is already fully supported. Bear in mind that even with Ubuntu you will usually need to use a non long term release if you have new hardware which means you will need to update to a new version every few months so it's much more hassle than simply buying a 2 year old computer. And the newer computer will probably only be marginally faster for most tasks anyway, but the headache of setting it up isn't worth it.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Chris Is there any chance for us the router savvy people user, to see any screenshots of what is inside the SETTINGS, for example: Port forward, login, DNS, DHCP SETTINGS, QS, bandwidth management, ETC. I hope is not much of a headache to post some screen shots. Respectfully David
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
I'm not sure how we might even go about preventing wireless devices with non-free firmware from connecting. I don't think that is a good idea either. While I'm in favour of leaving out non-free components particularly unnecessary ones (ie there is a free solution available) taking steps to prevent people from using non-free software crosses a line. I think its contrary to the very goals of ensuring user freedom. RMS, Rubén, myself, and others in the community have made some very valid points on the matter of why its a bad idea. The extent of it should be removing information that directs users to install non-free software. In any event the router itself does not require non-free pieces of code and the distribution that runs on it does not include non-free code (and if you find something we missed report it as a bug). Here are a few screen shots: * We may be able to add features to the default image although it'll require additional packages and time for license review. Some components are potentially non-free. As it is the router is usable as a basic router and ships with solid default settings that'll make it easy to hook up.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
That looks great :) And preventing people from using wifi adapters with nonfree firmware is a horrible idea. It sounds similar to what proprietary software companies do.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
I think you need to back up a moment. It's probably not quite as bad as you think. LibreCMC didn't take a significant amount of time to produce. As I stated its more like a LibreWRT v2. I'm not even sure why after this is released you would want to use LibreWRT. 2nd had you contributed to OpenWRT or LibreWRT financially you could have indirectly assisted in LibreCMC. Remember whose working on LibreCMC? It's the same developer that was instrumental in getting LibreWRT off the ground. And I'd not arguing that there is no value in ProteanOS. It's just that I'm not convinced that ProteanOS is a viable long term solution at this time because of the amount of work required to maintain it. As a learning endeavour ProteanOS may actually still have value to the developer of that project. However I don't think its a sustainable project unless there is a large company actually interested in it and willing to cough up significant money to fund it. Comparatively LibreCMC is small and nimble and takes upstream development efforts to reduce its costs. It's not going to cost a great deal because it's mostly just OpenWRT without the non-free pieces and because its up to date we're able to produce a business model around it that can help fund its maintenance and development (potentially- there still isn't much money in this-which is in part why it is critical that the project remains small).
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/free-software-wireless-n-broadband-router-gnu-linux-tpe-nwifirouter It'll probably be available, but not yet. We're still in development.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Yes, I hope that gets fixed. I thought the Linux-libre developers were finding a way to prevent suggesting nonfree firmware while not blocking it.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
How is the router any different from this one? http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/tp-link/tl-wr841nd This router has an Atheros card supported by a free driver. Is there a reason Libreboot or any other free distro hasn't been ported to it?
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Libreboot isn't a distro; it's a free version of Coreboot. You probably meant LibreWRT or LibreCMC.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Yes I meant LibreWRT.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
No WPA2?
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
The *key* thing here is this router ships with 100% free software, will be RYF certified (shortly), will be funding LibreCMC development, and is commercially available. No other commercially available router on the market ships with or runs a 100% free OS right now. If we get LibreCMC off the ground that'll change and right now this is the first router. If you wanted to go out and buy another device LibreCMC may run on it still. It's a distribution for embedded devices after all. The problem is that most routers and other devices are dependent on some non-free software. Even devices that you think are 100% free software friendly are really just less hostile. As a case in point there may be non-free code for a gigabit switch built-into an otherwise free software router. It's not obvious and LibreCMC may still run on it without problem. So you'll still be running the risk of running at least some non-free software if you buy a random router and try to run LibreCMC on it. There is also the problem of model numbers not being sufficient to know what your actually getting. The community regularly bricks devices in the process of flashing them. People get upset because nobody will help them 'unbrick' them. Sometimes you really can't unbrick them if its a true brick (at least not without special tools, and even them I'm not 100% sure you can always unbrick either, etc). It's really quite unreasonable to get upset over such things when everybody has clear warnings about it, but none-the-less. So far we have tested LibreCMC on several embedded devices and hopefully it'll eventually get used more widely. Right now it's just this one router and for us that's a good start. The other devices I believe we tested against: the Ben NanoNote, another was a higher end router with more flash, and a mini wifi adapter. There probably were a few others I'm forgetting about. The one router might have had some non-free component for the gigabit switch. Not sure what we concluded, but it wasn't a priority anyway given it wasn't a device class that would have much demand.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
LibreWRT only supports one? or maybe two older routers that aren't available on the market.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
I thought I'd also mention that one of the original and lead developers (ex-developers) of LibreWRT founded LibreCMC and is also our CTO. If that makes any sense in regards to the 'modern' comment above. One of the goals of the project is to keep it up to date (more bleeding edge). Something that never happened with LibreWRT.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
I just have a cheap router but liberating my router is my next goal after my PC. Is this based on DD-WRT or is it something different? I imagine DD-WRT has binary blobs in it's kernel? Is this a distro that takes those out or is this something different?
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Yes- Like LibreWRT LibreCMC has taken OpenWRT and ripped out a ton of code. At the moment that's about all it is. However if there is demand and people contributing there is a lot of potential for the router and other devices or types of devices. Particularly ones that are freedom-oriented. For example I'd love to put out a product that makes it easy to maintain your own personal mail server. Currently the laws in the United States make it easy for law enforcement to gain access to any emails stored on a third party server. While in transit they are protected, but after a certain number of days thats no longer the case. Using companies like Yahoo! and Gmail put your communications at unnecessary risk. In an ideal world there would be a cheap device (under $100) that users could plug into a network and access remotely. Something that gives users all the benefits of web mail without the privacy head aches of using a third party. Now this isn't the end-all solution to the problems governments present (think NSA). Such agencies are still going to be able to monitor unencrypted communications even if such communications can't be used in court (sadly, it is apparent it is being used to identify people of 'interest' though, commonly known as Parallel Construction). No. We need a solution that automates the use of encryption built into such a device as well. Ideally it would have the anonymity properties of Tor with the authentication of GPG. That is you can be relatively sure the person your talking to is the same person and nobody else each time you communicate and they still can't identify you unless your reveal such identifying information within the communication (or post it elsewhere).
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
From reading this I get the feeling of LibreWRT is old and crusty - Come use LibreCMC. LibreWRT's goal isn't only support old stuff. Help on LibreWRT is always welcome. That's always been the case. For some reason one of the people involved in LibreWRT got the impression that their work wasn't welcome for some reason. I'm not sure what happened or why - I have absolutely no memory of anything ever happening nor has it ever been properly explained to me. Either way, LibreCMC was then born. Plus there's also ProteanOS as yet another effort: http://proteanos.com/ It would be nice if efforts would be re-unified. The free distro world doesn't need fragmenting. It's too small already.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Chris I volunteer!! check your e-mail that I send you via your web site.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Got the email, but the response to it bounced back. You probably entered a wrong address in the contact form. In any event you can participate. I added shipping options for the Philippines and Canada so you can order one now. No reason it shouldn't work. The router supports up to 240V and the Philippines uses the North American plug type.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
Yes I know that but the LibreWRT page doesn't say which non free components are required to run it on other routers so one might get the impression that they simply didn't port it yet to other routers. Also, searching for LibreWRT and the router wr841n actually provides some source code results such as these http://svn.librewrt.org/librewrt/trunk/target/linux/ar71xx/base-files/etc/defconfig/tl-wr841n-v1/ http://svn.librewrt.org/librewrt/creative-craftsman/target/linux/ar71xx/files/arch/mips/ar71xx/mach-tl-wr841n.c but there is no explanation about this port on LibreWRT's main page.
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
What's the difference between this distro and libreWRT?
Re: [Trisquel-users] LibreCMC: Free Software Router Distribution Beta
It's modern. LibreWRT is based on a very old code base that isn't compatible with routers out today. LibreCMC is.
