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Replicant is a fully free Android distribution running on several devices, a free software mobile operating system putting the emphasis on freedom and privacy/security.
Wolfgang Wiedmeyer of Replicant reports
Replicant 6.0 is moving forward and quite some work has been done over the last months.
- Galaxy S2
Only the Galaxy S3 was supported for a very long time. Recently, support for the Galaxy S2 was added. This was made possible because two community members, Grim Kriegor and dllud, sent me a device. The initial work on the device by another community member, Jookia, also gave me a head start for the port.
- GTA04
[...] I assisted Lukas Märdian from Goldelico with porting Replicant 6.0 to the GTA04 and at the end of the [8th Open Hardware and Software Workshop], we were able to boot Replicant 6.0 and had basic functionality working. Lukas continues to work on the port and I'm planning to integrate his changes and get Replicant 6.0 ready for the GTA04.
- Support for external WiFi dongles with the AR9271 chipset [...]
- Graphics rendering [...]
- Toolchain [...]
- Security/privacy enhancements [...]
- Current work and future plans
Porting Replicant 6.0 to more devices is a priority right now. [...]
Replicant is based on CyanogenMod 13.0. As the CyanogenMod project was discontinued, future Replicant 6.0 versions will be based on its successor, LineageOS 13.0.
(Score: 1) by Lester on Monday February 06 2017, @09:59AM
The main problem of open source OSs is hardware and drivers. In the PC world there are standards to certain extent, you can get drivers for any hardware, unfortunately many times you can only get buggy drivers and/or not optimized drivers that can't use the full power of the hardware, but at least you can get something that works. In smartphone's world you can't even get basic information for hardware. You can't get a minimal functional smartphone working with modern hardware. You only can get hardware information with obsolete hardware.
Modern smartphones can't use open source OSs, and will never be able (calling Android Open Source is a joke). And the same for any modern gadget (tablets, eReaders...). They have learned the lesson They won't repeat the mistakes they did in PC world: No standards for internal hardware, they will own the gadget, they will completely control the hardware and the software.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday February 06 2017, @11:06AM
This.
Project ara was possibly disinfo or/and a way to get patents so nobody else can cheaply go that route.
Account abandoned.