Summary
We are an emerging hardware company and wanted to provide an additional server for users of this software. Our server provides unique characteristics that the existing product lacks as it is modular in design and can be as basic or as powerful as desired.
Problem
Having one provider with anything is not the best option for users. We would like to be an alternative/additional source for a physical hardware server for people around the world.
Solution
Become an additional provider for hardware servers that can utilize this fantastic software stack! Again, ours is modular in design so users make it work with wired and/or wireless, change/swap/upgrade SoC and RAM, use eMMC and/or SD, etc. The design of your unit is up to you! This will also cost less to upgrade over time since you are not buying a whole new board, but simply swapping components (much like a traditional computer).
Screenshots/Layouts
Visit our website for this - bluboards.com (we are currently crowd sourcing)
Alternatives
We aim to be an alternative!
Tasks
We are currently crowd sourcing the units and afterwards we would have to make sure that the freedombox software works as designed on the units. We would love to work with this community to bring this to reality while also setting up links to this site on our main page of the website to help drive traffic here so others can be made aware of this project!
Thank you for you interest in the project. I am very excited to know that you are interesting in building hardware with FreedomBox software stack.
Many in this community believe that choice of hardware is important for the end user and we intend to help multiple vendors sell their hardware with FreedomBox.
Hardware with upgradable components sounds interesting. I would love to work with you on supporting your hardware. All the best for your campaign.
Good morning sunil - thanks for responding! I look forward to working with this community as well to bring another choice for users in regards to their choice of hardware and will try to keep this forum up-to-date with our progress. Also, I’ll go ahead and add a link to this project on our website today since I am getting feedback for inclusion. I am excited to hear from other members of this community, so please keep in touch!
Thanks for reaching out, @bluboards. Your project sounds exciting. As Sunil said, we welcome new hardware models into our ecosystem, and we strive to give our users many choices.
Since the beginning of the FreedomBox project, we have always aimed for our software system to be hardware-neutral. That was one major reason we made FreedomBox a Debian pure-blend: Debian is known for being compatible with many hardware models, and we wanted our system to offer the same benefit. Throughout the years, we have built custom images for new hardware models as these models have gained support by the broader Debian ecosystem. Most recently, we added support for Banana Pro, Pine64(+), PINE A64-LTS, and Lamobo R1 single-board computers.
Historically, two conditions have been met before we began supporting a given hardware model: (1) the hardware was already in production and (2) the hardware was already compatible with Debian and had a community of supporters who can submit patches to the upstream for hardware-specific issues (e.g. u-boot and firmware). Additionally, we have a strong preference for hardware that requires no non-free firmware.
Since your project is still in the development phase, we can’t make any promises just yet. But we can offer our encouragement!
I will keep an eye on your project as it develops. Best of luck!
Well said @haidar! I can completely understand what you are saying and support that stance. There are a gazillion hardware products on the market and without having a broad range of support, there would be more effort put forth than benefit being returned. Our hope is to obviously become a manufacturer that is well supported and can contribute as much as possible to open source, open platforms, and open ideas. And with the support of communities like this, I think we are well on our way. I do appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing from you (and working with you) in the future!