I attempted to liberate the CHIP (which is only $9) a while back. I got stuck
due to my lack of knowledge of compiling a kernel, but maybe you can get
further with that than I did. You’ll need
- the CHIP
https://nextthing.co/pages/chip
- a USB WiFi adapter
https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb
- a paperclip
(1) Replace the CHIP’s default OS with vanilla Debian. I can confirm that
the Ubuntu instructions work for Trisquel 7, so you don’t need to use the
evil Chrome thing they recommend.
https://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#setup-ubuntu-for-flashing
https://docs.getchip.com/chip.html#flash-chip-firmware
(2) Build open-ath9k-htc-firmware so that your USB WiFi adapter will work.
https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k_htc/open_firmware
(3) Replace NextThingCo’s kernel. I was able to deblob it using FSFLA’s
linux-libre scripts
https://github.com/mason-hock/CHIP-linux-libre
but I could not figure out how to compile it for armhf and get it working on
the CHIP. If you can manage that, all you’ll need to do next is
(4) remove the non-free WiFi firmware, GPU firmware, and kernel via $ sudo
apt-get remove chip-mali-modules-4.4.13-ntc-mlc chip-mali-userspace
rtl8723bs-bt rtl8723bs-bt-mp-driver-common
rtl8723bs-bt-mp-driver-modules-4.4.13-ntc-mlc
rtl8723bs-mp-driver-modules-4.4.13-ntc-mlc linux-image-4.4.13-ntc-mlc The
other packages from NTC’s repository that are installed by default are all
GPL or another libre license. I didn’t investigate the ones that aren’t
installed by default.
