On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 9:42 AM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:

It's kind of useless to point to a bunch of random laptops with a
compatible chipset. It's never that simple. You don't know what the EC
is or how to talk to it, and you don't have critical info you need to
really make this work. So count on about a year of effort,
potentially. What if there's a magic i2c mux down in there somewhere?
What if there's some weird flash locking? And on and on, it's a long
list.

If somebody wants a laptop with coreboot today, that has vendor
support, get an acer c7 chromebook. If you can stand the keyboard,
which you really want to test. But it's an incredible deal.

ron

To echo what Ron said, if you want to devote the time and resources, those AMD laptops do look tempting.

The linux kernel has spoiled us: at the OS level there are de-facto standards, largely dictated by Microsoft. Linux developers spend most of their effort working on 3rd-party add-on hardware support.

I'm as concerned about treacherous computing as anybody. But face the facts: coreboot's supported hardware list is just not very comprehensive. And the laptop options right now are Intel-based, all with things like the EC, IMC, ME ... Intel is hard at work adding hidden treacherous computing. Catching up to Intel and beating them at their own game is a tall order.

How do you want to help? You can get a Thinkpad right now, with the best coreboot has to offer, knowing full well it isn't 100% free (yet). You can start a porting effort for those AMD laptops. Really, it's a green field and wide open and I think the project is pretty welcoming to new contributors.

The only thing you should be aware of is that coreboot is _hard_. Like, harder than Linux, harder than reversing a closed app, harder than unlocking cell phones and rooting them, but imo worth it.

Cheers,
David