Quoting "Robin Humble" <rjh+luv@cita.utoronto.ca>

On Wed, Nov 27, 2013 at 02:54:05PM +1100, Petros wrote:

...

I bought a ZTE phone with Firefox OS on it (from eBay for ca. $90, still on the way to me),

I digress, but in general if you just want a small linux computer then things like RPi, cubieboard are somewhat easier to get real OS's (fedora, ubuntu, etc.) running on. even then, accelerated graphics remains problematic. I think all small arm thingies still have binary blob graphics, but some have linux/glibc blobs instead of android blobs(?). kernel versions are typically frozen because of these blobs. lima and freedreno etc. are making progress fast though :)

I understand the "BLOB thing" but should be more or less kernel related only. (?) For the purpose of illustration: I am running FreeBSD servers with multiple jails on it. I keep the kernel (shared by the jails) for months as longs as there isn't a security issue. But the userland of a jail gets refreshed regularly, or I use the newest userland for new jails. This userland comes centralised from the FreeBSD project (base system and ports). Well, if there are one/two/many ARMs (my knowledge of this architecture is pretty blury still).. in general you can compile or cross-compile if you need to, so that should be possible for ARM devices too (as said userland) (btw. that should give Gentoo some advantage - it is built to be upgraded from source?) This userland based on open source creates a more or less trustworthy system so I know what the computer is doing. And it gives me a useful collection of software so I don't have the feeling "I miss out" because of some manufacturer software which is needed to have it working properly. It is not for me only, it is for "average Joe" who can download, use and upgrade a Debian/Fedora.. for its desktop. As said, I am not talking about upgrading the kernel, being able to upgrade the userland would be a mighty helpful step. Is this achievable? Thanks for the answers. It is quite helpful. I don't think I have enough knowledge and time to port a whole OS to a new device so I am more interested in a kind of "distribution". But I am still interested to know how it works, to tweak it for my own purposes etc. Regards Peter