Re: [coreboot] A new, modern coreboot long-term support laptop (was: Expectations, project direction and interest of contributors)

[David Hendricks]

On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 10:31 PM, ron minnich <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The volunteers need to lead this AMD effort, and the first step is finding
> the person to make it happen, and the next step is finding money.
>
> But, first, you really ought to make sure it's AMD you want, not ARM. And
> once you pick out a laptop, fill out the blob matrix, please, so we know
> what's going on.

I think the ARM Chromebooks will be excellent targets for the reasons that
you cite (few if any blobs, no ME, open EC firmware) once we get the
situation resolved w.r.t. loading a kernel in a sane and consistent manner.
IIRC even the Mali graphics drivers are becoming more open these days,
though I don't know the exact status off-hand.

Of course I'm biased in this matter ;-)

Further, you need to make this scale. By the time you're done the first
> one, the laptop you choose will almost certainly no longer be sold. So you
> need to plan for, not just the first laptop, but the 2nd and 3rd and so on.
> Just doing it once has no value. That's one reason I keep advocating for
> starting with a chromebook; I have some idea of what it takes to do this,
> and a chromebook gives you a huge head start. I also understand the reasons
> you *don't* want to use chromebooks, however.
>
> But if you took the huge amount of volunteer talent and effort that has
> been expended on obsolete thinkpads and old boards, and got it on this
> project, you could make it happen. Burn the boats!

Yeah, that's something volunteers in the community should coordinate on if
folks are really gung-ho about this. Porting to older hardware is a fun
exercise and certainly educational, but IMO that's not necessarily going to
make RYF laptops the norm any time soon.

Perhaps there are some families of laptops a few active contributors will
be able to coalesce around. Maybe Lenovo models with AMD chips use the
familiar EC firmware and would make good targets to port to over multiple
generations. It would be great to see individuals and groups like Gluglug
selling more modern, desireable laptops.