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Looking for completely open-source alternatives to the Raspberr Pi, Looking for an 100% libre computing expierence. Any recommendations?

I don't about hardware specifications it just needs to be 100% libre

For price range preferably under 35 USD

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  • Esp32 - such as this one - if you are happy with bare metal and don't need an operating system.
    – Mawg
    Commented Nov 17, 2021 at 17:26

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It's hard to find a fully libre design in your price range. Most will be based on Allwiner or similar SoCs, which are probably not vendors you want to support, regardless of the availability of opensource code, not to mention schematics. In addition you probably won't find WiFi without closed, binary blob firmware.

Having said that, there are such vendors and boards. Texas Instruments, NXP and ST Microelectronics are vendors with first party OSS support, although you might have to accept an EULA. NXP has support in Linux Foundation Yocto Project, some TI boards are supported too (BeagleBone Black for example). ST has first-party Yocto layer on GitHub.

Most, if not all, of this SoCs will be using PowerVR graphics, which traditionally didn't play nice with OSS, but the current free driver has performance parity with the priopretary one. This is probably a compromise you'll have to make.

On to boards themselves. First vendor which comes to mind is BeagleBoard, particularly PocketBeagle and BeagleBone Black. Second, which I believe also has schematics available, is MYiR (myirtech), although the software provided will be likely outdated, so you'll have to port or update to something more modern yourself.

Lastly, when asking for fully libre hardware, please specify where you draw the line - when you get to the bottom of it, nothing is fully open. Software is one thing. With hardware some vendors will provide schematics, rare ones will provide board design files, but there are no open source SoCs around. Similarly, most WiFi chips require closed source firmware.

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The best you can get, (which you can't get, because it's not released for the general public yet), is the BeagleV. This board has a RISC-V CPU. It does come with some nvidia hardware on it, but the rest should be good.

It is supposed to be available for the general public around summer 2021, where you will be able to get cheaper options than the current, quite a lot steeper price than what you asked for, of 149$.

You will be able to run several OS' on the board, including Fedora and RTOS.

https://beaglev.seeed.cc/

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  • Do you know if that SBC will be available in SoM format?
    – jaskij
    Commented May 26, 2021 at 9:47
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    Sadly, I don't know a lot more than I've already told you.
    – Clearer
    Commented May 31, 2021 at 7:37

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