Hi,
seems like more and more dongle-functionality is going into UEFI:
http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Windows-8-to-include-secure-boot-... http://vr-zone.com/articles/the-upgrade-path-to-ivy-bridge-might-be-blocked-...
Since their "Next-Gen" "Trusted Computing" "Deep Shit" was an utter failure, one could expect, that sooner or later they would be at the gates again with this, "functionality".
Besides spreading the word around, that there IS an alternative to UEFI, what else can I as a customer do, to ensure there will always be at least a few mainboards which run fully stable (and maybe even out-of-the-box) with coreboot (+SeaBIOS/GRUB) ?
1. Preferring hardware with such support? Sure. This filter here http://gh.de/?cat=mbson&sort=p%C2%A0 allows me to filter for all sorts of stuff, but not, for coreboot support. That is just sad. Only by accident do I know, that this http://gh.de/610927 IS already supported by coreboot.
I stumbled upon the information in the http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards but really only accidentally, because I did not search, because I did not expect that new (= currently purchasable) boards are supported by coreboot! That is why me thinks, spreading the word, is not such a bad idea, and quite necessary. How to do that, without sounding like a zealot? The decision for coreboot, is not so much about today, is also about the products available in 5 or 10 years from now on!
2. Actually buying that hardware. Definitely! Probably for Christmas I am going to set up a HTPC, I'll use a mainboard with coreboot support.
**But** how do I make it crystal clear to the seller/manufacturer that the coreboot-support is the reason that make me buy this particular product and not all the marketing bla bla?
Any ideas?
I do not want to write some lame e-mail claiming or demanding something. The moment I give him my money in exchange for the product, I really would like him to understand, that is is the coreboot support I am after. All mainboards have PCIe and DRAM banks, but the one I am buying, has coreboot support.
Hi,
On Fri, Sep 9, 2011 at 10:52 PM, Peter Schmidt ps947@yahoo.de wrote:
From a consumer's perspective, "fully stable" is expected; and using
"fully stable" as a marketing strategy isn't likely to get more than a groan. The main things actual consumers care about are things like faster boot times, maintenance and setup hassle, compatibility with industry standards (BIOS, EFI, ACPI, SMBIOS, PXE, etc) and security.
If you take a look at these areas; for boot times coreboot does have an advantage. For maintenance and setup hassle it's a nightmare (unless you can find motherboards/computers that have coreboot pre-installed). For compatibility with industry standards it's "hit or miss" (it's hard to be more "EFI compatible" than EFI, for example). For security coreboot mostly fails (there's a tendency for coreboot developers to whine about things like the "bad" uses of TPM rather than recognizing the demand from improved security and then taking steps to match or exceed the capabilities of alternatives).
I can almost guarantee that someone will say "open source", and they will be right - open source is an important advantage for people that are prepared to read/understand the source code.
Unfortunately most actual consumers can't read or understand the source code (and most of those that can have better things to do), so actual consumers don't care. The (mostly theoretical) "many eyes" benefit of open source is not superior to the (very real) "sue your asses if you screw it up" benefit of dealing with "for profit" companies. These are *not* mutually exclusive. For example, it would increase consumer confidence a lot if people could choose to pay for some sort of "fitness for a particular purpose" guarantee. Even something simple like "If you want to, you can send us $5 and if coreboot doesn't work as advertised we'll give you $50" would send a clear message to consumers that you believe in the reliability of coreboot enough to try to make profit from that reliability; even if no consumer ever takes up the challenge and pays that $5. The reverse is also true - if you don't try to make profit from coreboot in some way, then some consumers (fortunately not all - things are getting better) may assume you're unwilling to accept any risk because you don't have any faith in coreboot yourselves.
Of course a lot of people won't like parts of what I've said. I can't blame them - I don't like parts of what I've said either. The fact is that the world is sad and broken, regardless of whether any of us like it or not.
A much better idea would be telling the retailer "Screw you, I'm buying a motherboard with coreboot pre-installed directly from coreboot.org because none of the products you sell mention coreboot compatibility and I don't want to end up with something that doesn't work". Retailers don't care why they made a sale as long as they make a sale, but they do care about lost sales.
Cheers,
Brendan
Unfortunately, as a consumer there isn't a whole lot that can be done. It's sort of like trying to buy a PC with Linux instead of Windows -- Due to volume, the cheapest and most readily-available hardware is ironically likely to have the Microsoft tax built into the pricetag. Similarly, nearly all PC motherboards will have the cost of proprietary BIOS royalties built-in. So replacing proprietary BIOS with Coreboot does not really help the vendor to realize potential cost savings.
IMHO the best thing is to get involved with the development communities, especially for stuff like servers and HTPC machines, and hopefully inspire some new products that are designed with Coreboot in-mind from the very beginning. The good news is that this has become much easier thanks to AMD who has upstreamed all the low-level code necessary to make that happen for modern hardware such as Fusion :-)
Coreboot is the alternative to UEFI. If UEFI is such a threat to customer freedom and also, if problems are expected, that these are two reasons to have a second look at coreboot.
I am not interested in running a cracked Windows or whatever, I just do not want this functionality on my hardware. Also, I do not wish to pay for its developement!
With Linux there are already problems with UEFI, because the mainboard/UEFI manufacturers do not adhere to the standards. (No link this time, please search yourself.) I do not like that as well.
And since I am the customer, please, let me decide what I pay for.
Peter
Am Mo 12 Sep 2011 13:06:07 CEST schrieb Peter Schmidt:
Coreboot is the alternative to UEFI.
It's complementary. UEFI (or what the consumer understands by it) barely covers hardware initialization, while coreboot doesn't really concern itself with firmware APIs.
With Linux there are already problems with UEFI, because the mainboard/UEFI manufacturers do not adhere to the standards. (No link this time, please search yourself.)
That's just the continuation of their inability of reading specs that they proudly presented to the world with BIOS interfaces. Their main advantage back then was a lack of a single, unified, formal spec. (But mjg's rants are amusing to read, yes)
And since I am the customer, please, let me decide what I pay for.
That plea is best directed towards mainboard vendors.
In the end, I still wonder why such things are discussed on this list. Preaching to the choir and all that (and creating weird public perception of what coreboot developer think about technology, as can be seen elsewhere in this thread).
How about you bring this up with: mainboard vendors, Intel (as UEFI fanboy #1), Tianocore (providing the user interfacing half of UEFI)? They are more likely to have any influence on the matter.
Patrick
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Brendan Trotter -
David Hendricks -
Patrick Georgi -
Peter Schmidt