Some thoughts about the question if free software distributions should include non-free software and how this relates to Replicant and Debian. An attempt at a fitting analogy is made at the end.

Some time ago, I started to wonder if it would be possible to update the old Linux kernel for the GT-I9300 variant (international version) of the Galaxy S3 to a more recent version.

The Galaxy S3 comes with a bootloader named S-Boot which is a proprietary bootloader from Samsung. In this post, I want to collect information about the possibilty to run the free bootloader U-Boot on the phone.

Recently, I managed to to make Replicant 6.0 buildable on Debian Stretch. I'm still using Debian Jessie on my machines, so I set up a chroot with Stretch. I'll document all the necessary steps in the following to establish a Stretch build environment and build Replicant 6.0 inside it.

Cloning large repositories can result in quite some load on the server side. A possible solution is the use of bundles. Git can package a certain revision in an archive. The client can fetch the bundle and set up a clone locally based on the bundle.

I try to use as much free software as possible. I don't only do this for moral or philosophical reasons, but also because there are numerous practical benefits.