How to remove the proprietary GPU blob?

[diligentcircle]

Decided to revive my old Pandora; it'll be useful for a trip that's coming up, and it'll probably be useful again in the future with its battery life.


So, I'm trying to remove the proprietary software in SuperZaxxon, i.e. the wireless firmware and whatever the proprietary software related to the GPU is (I never learned exactly what it is -- is it a driver, firmware, or something else?). I tried to follow these instructions given by Notaz a few years ago:

http://boards.openpandora.org/topic/11076-request-completely-free-os/page-3#entry206042


However, it seems something significant has changed; "opkg remove libgles-omap3" doesn't remove any packages, which I suppose means the package doesn't exist. So, can someone tell me how to remove this software in the current version of SuperZaxxon?

 

[TrashyMG]

After running 'sudo opkg update' to update the repository list and running a search on omap. I see this and it's most likely what you want to remove:

omap3-sgx-modules - 1.4.14.2616-r28i.5 - Kernel drivers for the PowerVR SGX chipset found in the omap3 SoCs


sudo opkg remove omap3-sgx-modules
Edit: also searching using list-installed feature of opkg I see these, it's also most likely another part of what you are looking to remove:

libgles-omap3-dm3730 - 4.03.00.02-r2.5
libgles-omap3-es23- 4.00.00.01-r5.5
 

 

[notaz]

omap3-sgx-modules is fully GPL with no blobs of any kind, there is no need to remove it (just provides transport and some hardware setup services for the blobs).

Otherwise it's correct, libgles-omap3-es23 are the blobs for CC and rebirth, libgles-omap3-dm3730 is for 1GHz (had to be split because different versions work better on different units).

 

[diligentcircle]

Thanks for the help!


I do have another related question now, though. I see that task-pandora-core lists libgles-omap3-es23 as a dependency, and task-pandora-xfce lists pandora-firmware as a dependency. What exactly are these packages, and what would be the effect of removing them? More directly, should I tell opkg to remove packages dependent on libgles-omap3-es23 and pandora-firmware, or should I tell it to ignore those dependencies?

 

[dimag0g]

^ these look like meta-packages which tell opkg which packages a typical user needs. If you remove them, your system will not be immediately affected, since these packages contain no files. However, if there is a future update which adds a new package to the firmware, you might not get that package.

I'd recommend to keep them and simply ignore the dependencies while removing the blobs.