Newbie questions

[Paul Kocialkowski]

> Great, I have a phone with open sofware now ;-)  I am glad with it, the
> userinterface is fast, and I can call with it. UMTS works too.

Replicant is not an open source project, but a free software project.
You can learn more about that distinction and why we think open source
misses the point, see
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html

> But I see on the GalaxyNexus page of the wiki: "Proprietary and likely
> signed bootloader". What does that mean, do I use something like a
> closed-source grub?

The software that is in charge of booting up the phone is indeed
proprietary software. Technically, it does the equivalent of the BIOS
and GRUB. The fact that it is signed means that we cannot make a free
software bootloader run on the device.

> When I would replace my old Nokia with the Replicant phone I would miss
> the camera a bit, so maybe I will switch to another phone with a working
> camera like the Galaxy S2. I am wondering that camera does work and the
> camera on the Nexus does not. Can somebody tell me more about that? Does
> the S2 has firmware in ROM or something like that? Or is it really open
> source firmware?

Again, you're using the wrong terminology. The Galaxy S2 indeed has
working cameras with Replicant, but the chips related to the camera run
proprietary software: the camera chip itself and the hardware component
in charge of accelerating the image encoding/decoding. The software
running on these chips was preinstalled in them and can most likely not
be updated, so you may consider it like a circuit.

> In my home UMTS is very unusuable, I have to go outside to use it. Is it
> possible to use ethernet over USB? Or is it possible to use a wifi stick
> on the USB port?

USB Wi-Fi would be possible in theory but will not work out of the box:
you'd have to build the proper modules and load them for that purpose.
The USB host may also not provide enough current to make it possible.

There is however USB networking. I wrote some scripts for that purpose a
long time ago and they're not working on recent versions, so someone
would have to fix them.
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