I am wondering, whether a platform with these specifications exists:
- Hacking-friendly from open boot-loader up (support for re-locking?)
- Linux mainline kernel (blob-free?) boot support with SMP.
- Free/Open device-drivers/firmware for all (built-in) radios/chips.
- Implementation in tablet form factor available in the market 2016Q3.
- USB-OTG multi-device support device-side
- Normal USB-Ports too. USB3 only possible with non-open firmware?
- Better than simpleFB graphics support.
- External graphics-out, available while Charging/OTG-ing
- I would expect a platform with the above specs to run Android too.
To the best of my knowledge, the above automatically excludes all phablets, because there are no (non-ancient) GSM/xG modems with open/updateable firmware. Though I would very much like to be proven wrong on this.
Also, unfortunately, this also seems to exclude all Intel/AMD Gear from the last plenty of years, because they all run a bunch of closed-source operating systems on the various mainboard chips.
I have been following this topic loosely over some time now, and have not found something like the above. Whenever I read about full support for a SOC, it seems to be about a platform not really available commercially anymore.
AFAICT some chipsets come close, but then fall short in important ways. Like the Debian support for Allwinner.
The things I would like to do on/with this device:
- Run a standard Linux distro on it (pref. Debian)
- Run my personal WM, tmux-, emacs-, browser-state-sessions
- Configure to auto-connect to some BT-HIDs, WIFIs, MiraCast sinks, etc.
- Connect USB devices like SDR, 3/4G, TTY, ETH, WIFI/BT, HID, V4L, etc.
- "full-stack" hardware/software firmware/OS/userspace development/tests.
- Use as (basically) a "PDA" on steroids, instead of a laptop
- Ideally transmit the (second, big) screen (= the desktop) over HDMI, or USB-ETH-RDP
To me, this use-case -though not quite mainstream yet- does not seem that far-fetched, so I'm wondering, which keyword/project/chipset/etc has been escaping my google-fu so far.