I'm going to buy a new laptop soon (has to have a touchscreen) and am considering buying one which supports coreboot.
Which model would that be?
From what the wiki tells me The X220 is supported best, thanks to
Vladimir, but also the X201 is listed in the green area.
The wiki lists some noticeable issues for the X201, though. Still it's green. Are those issues (especially "The X201 immedeatly powers off after resuming from suspend resulting a completely lost session sometimes (Race condition)" still unsolved?
thx
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On 01/30/2017 10:53 AM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
I'm going to buy a new laptop soon (has to have a touchscreen) and am considering buying one which supports coreboot.
Which model would that be?
From what the wiki tells me The X220 is supported best, thanks to Vladimir, but also the X201 is listed in the green area.
The wiki lists some noticeable issues for the X201, though. Still it's green. Are those issues (especially "The X201 immedeatly powers off after resuming from suspend resulting a completely lost session sometimes (Race condition)" still unsolved?
thx
The answer to this question also hinges on whether you would like a blob-free / owner controlled machine or are OK with most of the "heavy lifting" coming from non-libre vendor provided firmware binaries.
I ask because if you're wanting to use coreboot purely for libre reasons, then you're going to be stuck with much older technology.
Thanks!
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com
I'm primary interested in it because of faster booting speed and in general getting rid off the stone-age functions vendor bios contains which are completely unnecessary to boot a modern x86-computer.
I don't mind if coreboot contains cpu microcode etc.
As far as I know the only total free computer is the X60.
But isn't this whole privacy issue more a topic for libreboot?
Am 30.01.2017 um 19:18 schrieb Timothy Pearson:
On 01/30/2017 10:53 AM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
I'm going to buy a new laptop soon (has to have a touchscreen) and am considering buying one which supports coreboot.
Which model would that be?
From what the wiki tells me The X220 is supported best, thanks to Vladimir, but also the X201 is listed in the green area.
The wiki lists some noticeable issues for the X201, though. Still it's green. Are those issues (especially "The X201 immedeatly powers off after resuming from suspend resulting a completely lost session sometimes (Race condition)" still unsolved?
thx
The answer to this question also hinges on whether you would like a blob-free / owner controlled machine or are OK with most of the "heavy lifting" coming from non-libre vendor provided firmware binaries.
I ask because if you're wanting to use coreboot purely for libre reasons, then you're going to be stuck with much older technology.
Thanks!
On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 12:13 PM Philipp Stanner stanner@posteo.de wrote:
But isn't this whole privacy issue more a topic for libreboot?
No. I think privacy matters a lot and it has always been part of the coreboot emphasis.
I personally don't agree that the extra measures libreboot takes are necessary and in some ways the libreboot measures are not sufficient -- they don't free the EC on most of those laptops IIUC, whereas the EC *is* free on chromebooks, which libreboot does not consider "free". Hence, from my point of view, libreboot requires something -- no microcode blobs -- that I think does not matter; and for all kinds of reasons they are not able to free the EC on their systems, and I think that's pretty important.
This is a really hard problem and lots of people are trying to get it right. We just don't all agree on the importance of some areas, microcode being one of them. But privacy is and always has been an area of interest to coreboot.
ron
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On 01/30/2017 02:12 PM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
I'm primary interested in it because of faster booting speed and in general getting rid off the stone-age functions vendor bios contains which are completely unnecessary to boot a modern x86-computer.
I don't mind if coreboot contains cpu microcode etc.
As far as I know the only total free computer is the X60.
But isn't this whole privacy issue more a topic for libreboot?
No, not really -- people have many reasons for wanting to use coreboot over a vendor firmware, and these reasons influence our recommendations.
Furthermore, I was specifically referring to the ME|PSP and FSP|binaryPI, not microcode. On many modern systems coreboot is a simple shim around vendor firmware, and in such cases you may or not gain anything by using coreboot versus the vendor firmware, depending of course on how the vendor implemented their firmware. This includes boot time; on platforms with large amounts of RAM where most of the time is spent in memory initialization, you will effectively be running the same MRC binary as the vendor firmware, so you won't really see a decrease in boot time.
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com
Well, these are sad news. I'm surprised that the amount of blobs is so high in modern hardware. Without desiring to criticize or judge the project: What's the goal for the future, when even you admit that there's no great difference in technical aspects to vendor firmware? The sole purpose of free hardware may be honorable, but my personal believe is that efficiency is more important to people.
Am 30.01.2017 um 23:09 schrieb Timothy Pearson:
On 01/30/2017 02:12 PM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
I'm primary interested in it because of faster booting speed and in general getting rid off the stone-age functions vendor bios contains which are completely unnecessary to boot a modern x86-computer.
I don't mind if coreboot contains cpu microcode etc.
As far as I know the only total free computer is the X60.
But isn't this whole privacy issue more a topic for libreboot?
No, not really -- people have many reasons for wanting to use coreboot over a vendor firmware, and these reasons influence our recommendations.
Furthermore, I was specifically referring to the ME|PSP and FSP|binaryPI, not microcode. On many modern systems coreboot is a simple shim around vendor firmware, and in such cases you may or not gain anything by using coreboot versus the vendor firmware, depending of course on how the vendor implemented their firmware. This includes boot time; on platforms with large amounts of RAM where most of the time is spent in memory initialization, you will effectively be running the same MRC binary as the vendor firmware, so you won't really see a decrease in boot time.
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On 01/31/2017 12:52 PM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
Well, these are sad news. I'm surprised that the amount of blobs is so high in modern hardware. Without desiring to criticize or judge the project: What's the goal for the future, when even you admit that there's no great difference in technical aspects to vendor firmware? The sole purpose of free hardware may be honorable, but my personal believe is that efficiency is more important to people.
Note: I don't speak for the project here, these are just my thoughts...
I would think that coreboot's future lies in a non-x86 direction. The only two general purpose x86 vendors are targeting consumers and small business, remain heavily tied to Microsoft, and really have no reason to offer libre-friendly systems when their primary market is going to use pre-packaged software. Even better, by adding "security" and requiring signing keys to boot said prepackaged software, some additional revenue can be generated from the software vendors.
It's interesting that you bring up efficiency as the end user's primary goal; in our experience inexpensiveness linked with ease of use are the primary goals of a typical end user. As a result, libre software is increasingly marginalised; I don't think libre software as we know it will easily survive the transition to cloud services. Sure, there will be exceptions like Launchpad that are released under the AGPL, but in general the trends are very clear -- the masses are clamoring for everything to be cloud based, and the manufacturers / software vendors are more than happy to comply as not only does no IP need to be released (either in source or binary form), but a steady revenue stream is virtually guaranteed -- if not from direct leasing fees, then from personal data mining and sale of targeted advertisements.
I predict libre software will be relegated to a (licensed?) userspace component on consumer systems at some point. Libre software as we know it may live on in retrocomputing and certainly in large business (cloud providers), but its heyday is over.
Just my $0.02 :D
- -- Timothy Pearson Raptor Engineering +1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line) +1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard) https://www.raptorengineering.com
On Tue, Jan 31, 2017 at 10:53 AM Philipp Stanner stanner@posteo.de wrote:
Well, these are sad news. I'm surprised that the amount of blobs is so high in modern hardware. Without desiring to criticize or judge the project: What's the goal for the future, when even you admit that there's no great difference in technical aspects to vendor firmware? The sole purpose of free hardware may be honorable, but my personal believe is that efficiency is more important to people .
well, if you are giving up on this goal, you are in the wrong place. :-)
nobody said it was easy.
ron
On 01/30/2017 11:53 AM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
I'm going to buy a new laptop soon (has to have a touchscreen) and am considering buying one which supports coreboot.
Which model would that be?
From what the wiki tells me The X220 is supported best, thanks to
Vladimir, but also the X201 is listed in the green area.
The wiki lists some noticeable issues for the X201, though. Still it's green. Are those issues (especially "The X201 immedeatly powers off after resuming from suspend resulting a completely lost session sometimes (Race condition)" still unsolved?
thx
Maybe the lenovo G505S? it is AMD pre-PSP.
On 01/30/2017 07:09 PM, Taiidan@gmx.com wrote:
On 01/30/2017 11:53 AM, Philipp Stanner wrote:
I'm going to buy a new laptop soon (has to have a touchscreen) and am considering buying one which supports coreboot.
Which model would that be?
From what the wiki tells me The X220 is supported best, thanks to
Vladimir, but also the X201 is listed in the green area.
The wiki lists some noticeable issues for the X201, though. Still it's green. Are those issues (especially "The X201 immedeatly powers off after resuming from suspend resulting a completely lost session sometimes (Race condition)" still unsolved?
thx
Maybe the lenovo G505S? it is AMD pre-PSP.
Nevermind it doesn't have a touch screen apparently.
The x220i (i think the i is the one with the touch screen, forgot the model variant - there is another non-touch model) would be your best choice if a touch screen is mandatory, it has ME although you can use ME cleaner to remove the significant bits which makes it slightly better and it has native ram init.
Coreboot on brand new laptops isn't actually coreboot like it used to be, it has been reduced to a pathetic vestige of its former self - simply a shim loader layer that does next to nothing besides get the purism phonies all excited for a "free" firmware laptop.
Coreboot on brand new laptops isn't actually coreboot like it used to be, it has been reduced to a pathetic vestige of its former self - simply a shim loader layer that does next to nothing besides get the purism phonies all excited for a "free" firmware laptop.
Could I get some details on this please?
I presume the following: "old" coreboot (in the X60 for example) used self-written code for hardware initalization (RAM setup, PCI config) while modern coreboot uses the vendor code for this, embedded in a coreboot frame?
If this doesn't speed up boot time (like someone mentioned before) at least you would get rid of features like Intel AMT - and you still could get a little speed advantage by starting the boot-loader or even Linux directly out of the flash?
-
Philipp Stanner -
ron minnich -
Taiidan＠gmx.com -
Timothy Pearson