Replicant on Nexus S preview

Posted by Paul Kocialkowski on the 08 November 2011 at 10h04 under the CC-BY-3.0 OR CC-BY-4.0 license(s).

As we already mentioned it, we have started the work to support the Nexus S on Replicant. We are now releasing preview images, the first set for the Nexus S! You can now download the preview images: replicant-2.3 for crespo.

This images includes the ipc-modemctrl tool (from libsamsung-ipc ) that implements minimal telephony support. Please test this tool and give us feedback: http://trac.osuosl.org/trac/replicant/wiki/libsamsung-ipc.

Here is a list of what's not ready yet in this preview image (but may be done in the future):

RIL: this is the crucial library used to handle telephony and data connectivity (3G). This is being worked on very hard and will be there in some time
GPS: we haven't worked at all on the GPS side: it might be possible to have it working (needs work)
Compass: it's the same as in Nexus One (which works) but the kernel driver is different (needs work)
Full Camera: Camera works but in Black & White preview mode and isn't very stable

Here's a list of what doesn't work in Replicant and is probably not going to be achieved:

3D acceleration
Whatever needs the non-free firmwares we don't include (NFC, MFC, WiFi, Bluetooth...)

We are indeed not including any non-free firmware (100% free is our goal) and are not going to provide any free replacement for these as we are not skilled to write such replacement. Though, the kernel we use won't prevent loading these firmwares if in place.

We also thought of porting u-boot to the Nexus S in order to have a free bootloader replacement but it's apparently not possible as primary bootloader (perhaps possible chainloaded).

Anyway, we made a video of Replicant 2.3 running on the Nexus S:

And also made a gallery of Screenshots showing Replicant on the Nexus S:

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