Sadly I think it does, as there's some closed hardware over there with no drivers in the kernel. Also, Jolla's OS itself is partially closed.
I miss the Nokia Maemo days, which was not completely open hardware wise. But almost there. In practice, it was running Debian on your phone (but again with some caveats, including a non-mainline kernel).
Perhaps DragonBox Pyra, about to be released, will give us the chance to re-create that experience. In theory it will be possible to run a mainline kernel and Debian, ArchARM, GuixSD or whatever ARM distro you like.
I've just had a look at the DragonBox Pyra. It looks like it's going to use a PowerVR GPU (i.e. no FOSS drivers).
Can you clarify how a mainline kernel can be run on such a device? I assume PowerVR are written only for specific kernel versions (e.g. in the same way GPU drivers are written specifically for Android's Linux kernel 3.4)
That's true. My plan was to run the Pyra without 3D acceleration, as I will use it just as a minilaptop for maps, chat and ssh. AFAIK, the Vivante chip included in Pyra has a usable free driver, which is what matters most for my usecase.
PowerVR is also said to be working on a free driver [1]. This might do the trick.
Generally, GPUs are the showstopper in ARM architectures. Otherwise, it is possible to run not only a mainline linux kernel, but a deblobbed one (linux-libre). I do this on a Chromebook C201 [2]. Note you don't even need CPU firmware, as it is the case with Intel.
Thing is that the Maemo days is perhaps what has spurred many controversial changes to Linux userland, the biggest of them being the development of Wayland.
On the surface Wayland is fairly innocuous, but it is having the effect of moving a whole lot of what used to be done by X onto the DE/toolkit.
