[Replicant] Replicant on Nexus One

[Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli]

On Sun, 14 Jan 2018 20:12:22 +0000
Isocrates <sophoclestechnologies at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
Hi,

> I have a Nexus One on which I would like to install Replicant. The
> wiki states that the status of this device is unmaintained,
This means that:
- The android version is old and not all applications might work on it.
- As the Replicant images for this devices are old, they will have tons
  of unfixed security issues.

To be able to fix the above, you need to add support for the Nexus One
in the current version of Replicant.
However I doubt that it is worth your time as this device has huge
freedom, privacy and security, and maintainability issues:
- I vaguely remember that this device required some non-free firmware to
  have working sound. This was not fixed. It should be fixed to have a
  functional device under Replicant.
- If my memory is correct, on this device the modem (which runs only
  nonfree software) controls the microphone and the GPS. Having nonfree
  software in control of the microphone is way too invasive.
- The modem (which runs only nonfree software) and the processor running
  Android are in the same chip, and share the RAM chips. This may allow
  the modem to take control of the main processor.
  Many other devices supported by Replicant don't have shared memory
  between the modem and the CPU running Android, which results in
  having more guarantees that the modem can't take the control of the
  processor running Android. Some devices like the galaxy S and the
  Nexus S also have this issue.
- The system on a chip(The chip where the modem and the main processor
  are) is from Qualcomm, and doesn't have good mainline support in the
  Linux kernel. While other devices don't use mainline Linux yet, it's
  something that we want to do in the future. It also impacts code
  quality, as smaller differences with mainline Linux tend to result in
  better code quality.

That said Replicant developers are not against integrating patches for
the Nexus one. However to be officially supported, it needs to support
basic functionalities (like phone calls) without any nonfree firmwares.
For instance the i9305 doesn't support phone calls yet, so it's
classified as "Unfinished device" but has releases images, like the
other devices.

> Could someone please advise me on how to install Replicant on the
> Nexus One?
You could try to follow one of the guides for devices which support
fastboot, such as the galaxy nexus, and adapt the instructions to the
Nexus one.

Denis.
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