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  '''A:''' Cubietruck SSD has a TransFlash (TF) slot meant to insert microSD cards on the device. SD cards will not be detected when inserted into USB based SD card readers. Cubietruck SSD with metal is tricky: please use your finger nail or any sharp object to insert the microSD card that will then latch in and lock. To release it, press again the same way.   '''A:''' Cubietruck SSD has a !TransFlash (TF) slot meant to insert microSD cards on the device. SD cards will not be detected when inserted into USB based SD card readers. Cubietruck SSD with metal is tricky: please use your finger nail or any sharp object to insert the microSD card that will then latch in and lock. To release it, press again the same way.

Translation(s): English - Français

Questions and Answers - FreedomBox

1. General introduction

1.1. What is FreedomBox ?

  • A: FreedomBox is a personal server that protects your privacy. It is a free software stack, a subset of the Debian universal operating system, that can be installed in many flavors of cheap and power-efficient hardware. The simplicity of setting up and operating a FreedomBox is similar to that of a smart phone. Continue reading Introduction page.

1.2. What does it do ?

  • A: FreedomBox allows you to provide services to your family and friends (files and bookmarks hosting, remote storage, chat, wiki/blog), to protect your private life against advertising compagnies while surfing on the net and to stay anonymous on the network. FreedomBox sets and upgrade automatically the security of these services. You can connect to FreedomBox when you are outside your home in a secure manner to access to services and reach other personal computers or electronic devices. You can chose to route your mobile phone trafic via your FreedomBox using your internet connection at home. You can also do group audio chats and bitorrent, even on very simple hardware.

1.3. Does FreedomBox do secure email server?

  • A: Future applications include secure email server, distributed social networking, passeword-less single sign on, browser assistant. Active contributors are working on it. They are also working on supporting more hardware.

1.4. Do i need some kind of expertise to start using FreedomBox?

  • A: You can't get right now a FreedomBox and a device all together to plug in and use. We have already made releases that are usefull for people now. You need a little bit of technical expertise to setup. What we are requiring is to buy a device and plug in an SD card. We would like to avoid that by having a finished product soon.

  • A: FreedomBox is a subset of Debian - available for some boards as a pre-installed image and generally available as a Debian package to be installed on top of a minimal pristine install of Debian.

1.6. May i ask a question ?

  • A: Feel free to add your question on this page (and answer if you have it) signing up and using edit feature. Answers mostly come from the FreedomBox discussion list achives.

2. Hardware (SBC)

2.1. A thing that is new to me is OpenHardware. What makes open hardware open? Anything in particular that I should be aware of?

  • A: Please use the more specific term "Open Source Hardware" or OSHW. OSHW is a definition intended to ensure your ability to "fork" a piece of hardware - i.e. pay a different factory to produce identical or derived hardware. Imagine a certain antenna vendor going bankrupt but you've created a business soldering their very particular antenna onto spaceships - when you have the "source code" for their hardware, you can pay a different vendor to produce identical antennas - and even modify them (e.g. if some particular chip inside has gone out of fashion and you wanna replace with another than requires different wiring. "Open Hardware" is a vague term (ab)used to mean several different things related to openness of hardware. Some hardware vendors promote their boards as "open" and provide a PDF of their board design - which may be good enough to make an identical copy but not enough to fork (is it complex to rewire when you don't have the source for _computing_ the layout of electrical wiring.
    A: See discussion on the FreedomBox list.

2.2. Q: What is a single board computer (SBC)?

  • A: A single board computer (SBC) is a "mini pc" based on a single circuit board that allows a reduction of overall cost. Most of them are cheap with low energy consumption. FreedomBox is developed towards Open Source SBCs providing plug-in cards.

2.3. Q: Do I need a single board computer like Cubietruck or Raspberry PI to run FreedomBox?

  • A: No, you can run FreedomBox on any computer that you can install Debian on. The FreedomBox team provides images for some of the more common single board computers and for virtual box to make it easier for people to get up and running. But you can install FreedomBox on any debian computer by installing the freedombox-setup package.

2.4. Q: Having never used such a device before what are your experiences in terms of performance with these small machines (SBC)?

  • A: On such tiny boxes you may not only wanna think about performance: The more performing boxes may(!) also be the more energy-consuming and therefore easier getting hot, needing a fan, and therefore noisier and potentially having a shorter lifespan. Different kinds of ARM devices perform different with same amount of energy - Allwinner-based boards of same grade (e.g. Cubietruck and LIME2 both built around Allwinner A20) roughly perform the same, whereas Sitara-based ones (like BeagleBone Black) is rumored to do some things more efficiently even if superficial specs may seem lower. Performance may be less important on a server than on a desktop system. I strongly believe the LIME2 is currently the best option, but that's just my subjective balance between performance, memory, openness and other factors. If price matters more then consider OLinuXIno LIME which has some but not all of above benefits but half the memory.
    A:if you're looking to compare the LIME and MICRO performance, both being Allwinner A20 board from OLIMEX, see this technical benchmark (it seems to mostly depend on whether you're willing to pay 20 EUR for an extra 512 MB RAM.)
    A: In my experience running on a BeagleBone black, it is capable of running most day to day needs (mail,website,php..) except for big php applications like Apache+wordpress or owncloud. They can run but are a bit sluggish. Apache and Mysql will definitely need to be tuned to use less CPU/memory.
    A: Although a bit pricer than others, the APU 1D is probably the fastest single board computer I have tested. It has an AMD G series dual core APU, 3 Gigabit Ethernet controllers and the boot firmware is Coreboot.
    A: See discussion on the FreedomBox list.

2.5. I'm wondering what wifi adapter to get, preferably one that runs with free firmware, can you recommend one?

  • A: You can take a look at the wiki page USB WiFi for serapated devices that do not require non-free firmware.
    A:The MOD-WIFI-R5370-ANT from olimex works really well, but needs a non-free firmware blob, the antenna is a bit fragile and on the MICRO you probably better connect it with some extension cable because the plug quite big. If you are willing to pay more, take a look at: fsf.org, tehnoetic.com and thinkpenguin.com

3. Download and Install

3.1. Do i have to install first Debian on a Cubietruck or is FreedomBox a system in itself?

  • A: The 0.6 cubietruck image is a full system.

3.2. What would be the benefit of installing first Debian, then FreedomBox packages?

  • A: A typical use case could be using hardware as a desktop/laptop and having FreedomBox run on the side. In this case, installing FreedomBox on Debian is a good fit. It is recommended that you install FreedomBox on a fresh Debian installation instead of an existing setup.

3.3. What should i know about installing Freedombox on SBCs ?

  • A: You should know that you should gather and read a lot of documentation about a first boot on your hardware. You can find documentation on the FreedomBox wiki or searching the net. Single Board Cards (SBC) have their own booting system, their own Bios if you like. You should then study pre-requirements in addition to the use of FreedomBox image file. Some SBCs suffer from a lake of official documentation.

3.4. What does mean "flashing an SD card"?

  • A:

3.5. SD card in not detected through USB or OTG on a Cubietruck SSD edition. Did i miss something ?

  • A: Cubietruck SSD has a TransFlash (TF) slot meant to insert microSD cards on the device. SD cards will not be detected when inserted into USB based SD card readers. Cubietruck SSD with metal is tricky: please use your finger nail or any sharp object to insert the microSD card that will then latch in and lock. To release it, press again the same way.

3.6. I'm happy to give the LIME2 board a try. Should't be a problem to flash that with freedombox image, should it?

3.7. Where can i find some documentation about a Cubietruck first boot?

  • A:You can find a document called "Cubieboard/FirstSteps" on linux-sunxi.org. The Linux-sunxi community is "an open source software community dedicated to providing open source operating system support for Allwinner SoC based devices." A system-on-a-chip (SoC) is a microchip that handle computer memory used (like RAM) to store information for immediate use. Allwinner is a particular brand of SoC processors.

4. About FreedomBox community

4.1. If somebody can connect me with the persons inside FreedomBox I need to talk to it would be great.

  • A: By writing to the mailing list or connecting to the IRC channel, you are addressing all the people contributing to FreedomBox. If you wish to talk to the active contributors, I suggest joining the monthly VOIP progress calls.


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