Warning: I don't know much from hardware. And when I say much, I mean nothing.
I had created a
thread regarding this in the Hardware Wallet section, but I choose to broaden it in the Dev & Tech board. Pretty simple question, but I've come to realize that it's much more difficult to answer than it seems.
When we say that a wallet software is closed source, we're afraid it may have access to our keys via the internet, sell our IP addresses and other info, or simply generate predictable entropy to steal our money in the smoothest way possible. We choose open source, so we can have a peace of mind.
So, how do we verify that the hardware doesn't generate predictable entropy, regardless of whether the wallet developers have bad intentions or not? I don't care about the OS, let's assume you use an open-source one; my focus is on those who build the hardware that is used to generate randomness.
Predictable entropy? Not sure I understand? Like the rate of oxidation on microelectronic metal pins which can mess with the electrical flow in such ways that one could possibly guess which metals were being used in the chip or something?
If predicting entropy is your game then from a physics perspective, that is impossible to tell at a certain tiny point but at a larger scale can be perhaps.
Although I very much doubt we have the technology to measure the teeny tiny differences, even if you were to make all the hardware parts 99.999999% the same there still would be random noise from tiny differences.
So no, I very much doubt you can verify the randomness accurately.