SoylentNews

canopic jug writes:

Developer Gavin L Rebeiro has posted[*see note below] a five-part article series at Techrights on how to deal with the ongoing Raspberry Pi fiasco by salvaging existing hardware with a replacement operating system.

• Part I: Acknowledgements
• Part II: Introduction
• Part III: Fundamentals
• Part IV: Doing The Task
• Part V: All The Rest

He covers the background, the technical principles, some methods for mitigation, proposes using NetBSD in place of the GNU/Linux, Raspberry Pi OS. Finally, he walks through installation of NetBSD.

We don't want to be spied on; what happens when we're faced with an operating system that spies on people? We throw it in the trash where it belongs! I am boycotting the Raspberry Spy myself (you're free to join me in doing so) but I don't want people to waste hardware that they already have. So we're going to walk through an interesting path of installing a different operating system on the Raspberry Spy; I want to show you a few things that will empower you to take greater control over your computing.

We'll gently walk through and explore the following: how to install an operating system on an embedded device (a Raspberry Spy, in this case) over a USB-to-UART bridge (UTUB). This is the main project we've got on our hands. Don't worry if you've never touched embedded systems before; everything here is accessible to people with a modest set of prerequisite knowledge and some basic apparatus.

We'll delve into things with more depth as we move forward with our project; if you don't understand something when you first encounter it, just keep reading.

NetBSD might be a bit of a leap for some, so it should be noted that there are other GNU/Linux distros for the Raspberry Pi which do not include the problems addressed above.

The focus of the series is on individual privacy, but a parallel threat exists for institutions because, after the recent changes, any use of Raspberrry Pi OS will show up at their most hostile competitor, Microsoft. The company has had a do-not-lose-to-Linux-at-any-cost attitude for decades and has various slush funds available to fund attacks. EDGI was one such program which did a lot of damage around the world and has been described in fair detail in the Comes v Microsoft case.

[* Ed's Note (2021-03-12): The author has let us know that his original article is available as a PDF, as techrights' version wasn't faithful. -- FP]

Previously:
(2021) Raspberry Pi Users Mortified as Microsoft Repository that Phones Home is Added to Pi OS

Original Submission