Swap out Linux with Linux-libre

General system
1

I want to avoid binary blobs, so is it possible to swap out Linux with Linux-libre without breaking anything within the operating system and can this be done so without recompiling Endevour?

1 Like
2

yay -S linux-libre linux-libre-headers linux-libre-firmware

will take some time as it will build these packages from AUR.

sudo mkinitcpio -P rebuild kernel images
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg regenerate grub menu

on boot menu you will be able to choose linux-libre to boot with then.

1 Like
3

THanks mate :slight_smile:

1 Like
4

I wanted to ask what does each and every command do exactly?

1 Like
5
2 Likes
6

Thanks for explaining it to me :slight_smile:

7

How long does it take to build?

8

It depends on your hardware and how much resources you assign to building. For most people, a clean build of the kernel will take 5-60 minutes.

2 Likes
9

If you want to avoid proprietary software completely, a great distro is Parabola GNU/Linux. It’s pretty much identical to Arch and EndeavourOS, but without any proprietary software.

I think this is a simpler, more elegant way to have a libre OS, rather than trying to remove proprietary stuff from EndeavourOS.

Arch (and consequently EndeavourOS) is an ideologically neutral distro, focused on pragmatism. Parabola is Arch, but with strong enforcement of Free Software ideology. It’s pretty awesome, if you’re willing to sacrifice some convenience of proprietary drivers/tools and have the hardware to run it.

5 Likes
10

Never heard of it - but thanks for the heads-up. It might just find its way onto a spare partition somewhere soon… :grin:

11

I think since Arch has reproducible builds which is very important unlike Parabola and EnOS is easy to install, I’d like to just swap the kernels. Thanks for the input!

12

Just curious mate, is linux-libre compatible with your hardware, including your graphics card?

13

The last part about “breaking things” is what would concern me. linux-libre is on kernel 5.13.8. The mainline kernel has received some fixes in the meantime which you would miss.

You can check out the change logs by yourself:

https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v5.x/

14

I find that to be quite unlikely, since LTS (5.10.62-1) is still used, and everything works fine with it (except the newest hardware).

But the only way to know is to try. Linux-libre is not officially supported by Arch, so anything can happen.

15

I use a laptop from Starlabs with coreboot. Integrated graphics is not a problem but the WifFi card did not work. I had to order one from thinkpenguin.com.

16

I am not sure I follow this logic. The mainline kernels introduce bugs with every new release so any issues from things added in 5.11-5.13 can get fixed in 5.14 but there would be no reason to backport those fixes to 5.10 because that code wouldn’t exist there.

17

What about 3D hardware acceleration with an AMD graphics card, would that work?

18

A user friendly change to the linux-libre kernel would be nice.

For nvidia you can use a 780TI with 6GiB of VRAM or a Nvidia Titan Black that also have 6GiB of VRAM. They both dont require any closed source software to run with nouveau. AMD is a bigger mess in this case and require closed software to run on equally modern AMD cards.