[Replicant] Making Replicant usable by more people while keeping it sustainable Was: making non free versions of replicant

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Sat, 19 Oct 2019 13:08:18 +0300
"ni nhar" <ninhar at inbox.lv> wrote:

> I have several times said, it is good we have replicant. But the
> phones which are replicant compatible makes replicant a no option for
> most people.
[...]
> You select the phone model because of its popularity and no matter if
> it has no modem isolation.
The reality here is also more complicated.

Replicant 6.0 is based on LineageOS 13 which doesn't support more
recent devices.

And for Replicant 9, we're trying to make Replicant sustainable, so
while the work is still based on LineageOS we will probably become less
and less close to LineageOS but still be an Android distribution.

If it works well, we should be able to support many devices running
upstream Linux, assuming we find some way to support the modem of such
devices.

This takes time but it also enables us to potentially support
smartphones like the GTA04, Librem5 and PinePhone.

Supporting the latest phones from well known brands is problematic as
adding support for them in a clean way takes way more time than making
small modifications to make it work without nonfree software.

It would be less an issue if the hardware was built to last, but the
fact that the batteries are not replaceable makes it very hard to be
able to support and use such devices in the long term.

Buying them second hand is also very complicated as you would need the
battery to last as long as a new one for the device to last. According
to Tiberiu from Technoethical, while replacing the battery is
technically feasible, it carries a big risk of breaking the device and
you're almost guaranteed to do some damage to the device along the way
(like not being able to restore the water-proof property, damaging the
color of the case or the case, etc).

This is also why we document which devices have a removable batteries
when evaluating devices:
https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/TargetsEvaluation

Note that the Galaxy SIII is still widely available as it has been sold
about 70 million units in 2015[1]. It has been launched in 2012 and
it should still be supported by Replicant 9.

The issues that prevent using Replicant are rather some of the bugs we
have that needs to be fixed:
- If your SIM doesn't work and that you need to change contract and
  carrier it can probably be a bigger blocker than the latest phone not
  being available.
- We could add support for additional carriers if we phones that
  support 4G. The Galaxy SIII 4G is a good candidate for that.
- We need to fix f-droid freedom to bring back f-droid so it would work
  out of the box for more people.
- Some applications from f-droid didn't work with Replicant 6.0 0003
  but that's being fixed in Replicant 9.0 and maybe in Replicant 6.0
  0004 depending on the speed tradeoffs.
- The installation instructions are only usable for people with some
  basic command line usage. Heimdall has a GUI. This could also be
  fixed to enable more people to install Replicant.
- We also need to investigate if we can make the WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS,
  and other components work. Having working WiFi out of the box would
  make it usable to more people.
- In the meantime, in Replicant 6.0, we have external WiFi dongle
  support and we also added support for Ethernet for some of the
  supported devices.
- There is also an investigation to understand if the Galaxy SIII
  bootloader can be completely replaced by free software[2].

Improving the installation instructions and documentation doesn't
require in-depth technical skills[3] and it's way more easy to do than
creating a new fork of LineageOS or Replicant.

References:
-----------
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galaxy_SIII
[2]https://github.com/xboot/xboot/issues/21
[3]This is because the current instructions are supposed to work, and
   that there is also some documentation on them. For instance the EFS
   backup procedure has documentation on it in the research section.
   So the idea would just be to simplify the existing procedure, for
   instance by giving more background or using only GUI to do the
   installation. I can give more pointers on why things are done in
   certain ways if necessary.

Denis.
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