Donate Devices to the Replicant Project¶

• Table of contents
• Donate Devices to the Replicant Project
  • Introduction
  • Contacting the Replicant project or developers
  • Devices
    • Maintained device
    • Device variants for porting or testing Replicant
      • Samsung Galaxy S3
      • Samsung Galaxy Note II
    • Broken devices with Exynnos 4412
    • Phones devkits
    • GNU/Linux smartphones, tablets and pda
    • No longer supported devices
  • Requesting devices

Introduction¶

While Replicant has some money to buy devices and from time to time does use it to do that, it's very time consuming to look and find the devices we are looking for.

Giving device directly to Replicant (paid and volunteer) developers would enable them to focus as much of their time as possible on development instead.

To this end, we very much welcome device donations.

Since we spend a lot of time researching which devices would be good for our project to port to, the types of devices we are interested in obtaining is somewhat limited.

If you have any of the devices below, please contact the Replicant project or developers.

Contacting the Replicant project or developers¶

Replicant developers can typically be found on the #replicant IRC channel on Freenode, or in the mailing list. It's a good idea to contact them through such means to donate devices. We also have a contact address for the project but it's often better to post to the mailing list if possible as more people might be interested in specific devices for doing specific work, especially when Replicant developers already have enough times the device you want to donate.

As Replicant developers also go to conferences it's also possible to see that with them at the conferences and give them devices there. This can save time as it can avoid shipping the devices.

Devices¶

As the Replicant project evolve and developers comes and leave, it is hard to precisely predict in advance which device model we will need and how many we need at a given point in time, but we still have some idea of which devices are needed or might be useful.

Maintained device¶

To make a Replicant release, it's a very good idea to make sure that at least one developer that is actively working on the release has at least every supported devices.
Without that we would need to wait (potentially indefinitely) for someone to test the release before it's released, or hope that the other devices are similar enough and that everything will work fine.

• When devices are very similar (like the Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and the Galaxy Tab 2 10.0), the probability of having one but not the other working is still small enough so we could take our chances.

• In some cases it's also interesting for a single developer to have multiples time the exact same device as it can help saving a lot of time when comparing things or when working on two totally different part of the code or different Replicant versions for the same device. For instance Replicant developers working on upstream Linux and Replicant 6 might have GNU/Linux installed on a device and on Replicant 6 installed on the other one.

A list of maintained devices is available on the supported-devices page

Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli still lacks the following devices:

• 1 Galaxy Note 8.0 WiFi (GT-N5110)
• 1 Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 WiFi (GT-P3110)
• 1 Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 WiFi (GT-P5110)
• 1 Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 GSM (GT-P5100)

However this is not crucial as he already has a Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 (P3100) which is similar enough. He will also get a Galaxy Note 8.0 (GT-N5100) soon.

Device variants for porting or testing Replicant¶

Replicant has been tested on very few variant of a given device. For instance for the Galaxy Note II, we only support the GT-N7100 variant. Having more variants would enable us to test Replicant on them, and if some more work is needed and that we can find the time to do it, to also port Replicant to them. Though right now most people are probably busy with Replicant 6.0 or Replicant 9.

Samsung Galaxy S3¶

In addition to the GT-I9300 variant which is already supported by Replicant, Replicant developers are lacking the following variants of the Galaxy SIII:

• GT-I9300X
• GT-I9305T
• GT-I9305N
• SGH-N035 (SC-03E)
• GT-I9308
• SCH-I939
• SCH-I939D
• SHV-E210K
• SHV-E210L
• SHV-E210S

Some Replicant developers also probably lack the Galaxy SIII 4G (GT-I9305) and are really needing one to work on the Replicant 9 port and/or the modem.

Samsung Galaxy Note II¶

In addition to the GT-N7100 variant which is already supported by Replicant, Replicant developers are lacking the following variants of the Galaxy Note II:

• GT-N7102
• GT-N7105
• GT-N7105T
• GT-N7108D
• GT-N7108
• SGH-i317
• SGH-i317M
• SCH-i605
• SCH-R950
• SCH-N719
• SGH-T889
• SGH-T889V
• SPH-L900
• SGH-N025 (SC-02E)
• SHV-E250K
• SHV-E250L
• SHV-E250S

Broken devices with Exynnos 4412¶

Two new Replicant developers are working to understand if we can find a way to run fully free software bootloaders on the devices that have an Exynos 4412 like the Galaxy SIII (GT-I9300). Even devices with broken screens or completely broken devices are useful for them.

Phones devkits¶

Phone devkits might be useful to Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli in the future (once Replicant 9 is ready) to do tests on modem isolations:

• The pinephone "Project Don't Be Evil" devkit, or the Librem 5 Devkit
• Librem5 devkit

Both devkits have an mPCIe connector, which enable to test way more easily the modem isolation by replacing the modem with an mpciE to USB adapter and plugging various peripherals like a keyboard for instance.

GNU/Linux smartphones, tablets and pda¶

Once Replicant 9 will be ready we will be able to add support for new devices.

We're really interested in the following devices:

• The Pinephone smartphone
• The Librem5 smartphone
• The Necunos NC_1 PDA

Some developers are probably interested in getting them before having a Replicant 9 release as it's possible to add support for them in parallel.

The following developers are also interested in getting them after the Replicant 9 release:

• Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli

Sending them before the release also works, but the work will probably not start before the release.

No longer supported devices¶

While Replicant decided to stop supporting devices with RAM between the modem and the main System on a chip, might still be a good idea to keep the following devices working in libsamsung-ipc nevertheless:

• Galaxy S (GT-I9000)
• Nexus S (GT-I902x)
• The Galaxy Tab that is supported by libsamsung-ipc (which variant?)

The Galaxy S (GT-I9000) and the Nexus S (GT-I902x) are supported by Replicant 4.2 that still builds with Trisquel7.

This could help testing libsamsung-ipc with such devices.

Requesting devices¶

When the devices were paid for by Replicant's money, it was common practice to ship devices to people that are already working on Replicant or related projects, to limit the risk of not having any work done.

However if the devices are donated by individual or companies it's up to decide to whom to give them to.