Hi,

I am trying to build a system that I understand from its roots to its leaves, because I am paranoid of android. (I hate the idea of the build.prop, preinstalled apps, the fact it uses 1.5gb ram and multiple system folders with creepy duplicate content)

So I have some questions:
1. Is there any device with fully open-hardware and open-source, without backdoors?Unlike olinuxino which has "debug" backdoor available..

2. Could the linux used to compile my own distro, influence the final distro? (If all packages are same version, will it result in the same)

3. Is it possible to get all sources from github? (e.g. http://www.intestinate.com/pilfs/guide.html is using their own sources, so i cannot review its content)



Many many thanks in advance,
Alexruedi

Hi Alexruedi and welcome to LQ. Please review that welcome link.

Have you looked for any information about Android source or Linux source? Have you done any particular development and debugging of an OS?

Before you ask for information which you infer "may" exist, or imply that there are hidden capabilities, perhaps you should research and cite what you've learned, prior to opening a general open-ended discussion. I'm not saying that it is a bad discussion topic, however it is more beneficial of a discussion if you offer some clear ideas and insight towards your thinking versus just asking for source and implying that hidden information exists in native forms of operating systems. There are plenty of Linux and Android source distributions available on the web if you choose to search.

Here also is a guide on how to best formulate your questions.

Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

There are fully open-source distributions. I don't know of any fully open-hardware computers. Maybe somebody else knows of one.

You should think of dependencies as being a group of clusters. Only a few packages are actually dependent on the kernel version. There are groups of packages that are dependent on each other i.e. you have to have the versions in sync for each group of packages. So for every package you have to know what packages it is dependent on and install compatible versions of all of the dependencies.

This is a lot of work. I upgraded a complete Linux system about 2005 where I worked out all of the dependencies myself and installed packages in compatible groups. As I remember it there were between 20 ands 30 groups of dependencies. Having done that once I have since been quite happy to let the distributions do all of the work of resolving dependencies.

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Steve Stites

In response to #1, I feel pretty comfortable saying that's a resounding "NO". First off, what do you mean by "device"? A phone? Table? Desktop computer? Secondly, no processors that I'm aware of are open hardware, companies wouldn't do that, the innards of their CPUs are closely-guarded secrets. On top of that, all modern Intel CPUs have back doors built into the CPU itself, they cannot be controlled, bypassed, or shut down. It wouldn't surprise me if AMD does the same. While I don't believe ARM procs have back doors in them (yet), I'm also not aware of any ARM CPUs that can run a fully open-source OS. They all require closed-source binary driver blobs.

Maybe if you went back in time enough you could find an AMD/Intel CPU (still not open hardware) that doesn't have any back doors built in, but you'll have to go at least 5+ years back for that.
If you truly want an open-hardware processor, you'll probably have to go back to 90s technology.

Might this interest you?

https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/novena

Novena: "A new open-hardware computing platform, flexible and powerful, designed for use as a desktop, laptop, or standalone board."

Thanks a lot for the many answers. I am glad for all input.

Maybe I could share ehy i ask:
I have a rooted Huawei Mate 7, and the system contains incredibly many xml files, i will upload them tomorrow so you will see. As far I understood the (new) battery uses only 10% of capacity, it heats quickly to 50 degrees Celsius, runs twenty apps(they are whitelisted by the system) during standby. Even the keyboard lags. I completely wiped the phone recovery dalvik etc, with different bootloaders (twrp but also cwm) but after 1-2 weeks its like that again. The files are all duplicates so no chance to remove all.

Now I am looking for a better combination of hardware and software.

Do you know what happens after removing system files? The sound is getting better..! Same after modifying build prop. In the end I am still not able to remove the default spy apps from Huawei (Browser, Recorder etc). Their phone management is showing 80% Ram usage when 1.55/2.94 is used.. I will upload screenshots etc tomorrow.

Is there any system I could use without getting paranoid?

Thanks