[coreboot] Your Opinion: The Best Board for coreboot ?

Robert Vogel vogel at ct.metrocast.net
Fri Mar 20 00:12:58 CET 2009


Thank you for your help Carl-Daniel,

I haven't yet updated, but I'm noticing that the Asus M2V-MX SE
doesn't seem to be available at any of the major outlets...

Would this be ok ? http://bytecom.stores.yahoo.net/giganvnf57ch.html

Is there another one you could recommend ?

Bob


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carl-Daniel Hailfinger" <c-d.hailfinger.devel.2006 at gmx.net>
To: "Robert Vogel" <vogel at ct.metrocast.net>
Cc: <coreboot at coreboot.org>
Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 3:39 PM
Subject: Re: [coreboot] Your Opinion: The Best Board for coreboot ?


> Hi Robert,
>
> On 19.03.2009 19:58, Robert Vogel wrote:
>> Hi Carl-Daniel,
>>
>> I'm just looking for a simple desktop solution that has as few
>> 'closed' components as possible.
>> Enough so that it can be more trustworthy.
>>
>> Last year I wrote the related page, so it isn't up to date. Correct me
>> on the points that bother you though
>> and I'll fix it.
>
> Sorry, no offense intended.
>
> Here is the (incomplete) list of errors in the BIOS section.
>
>> I am not aware of single motherboard manufacturer that offers an open
>> source BIOS.
>
> Tyan offers boards with coreboot. Silicon Mechanics offers boards with
> coreboot (though not necessarily boards manufactured by them).
>
>> The most likely vendors (Tyan and Giga) have no interest in allowing a
>> substitute BIOS.
>
> See above.
>
>> The Free Software Foundation is working on it
>
> No.
>
>> It is not practical, right now, for a personal computer.
>
> Works for quite a few boards in the consumer range.
>
>> The Free Software Foundation has listed motherboards
>> <http://linuxbios.org/index.php/Supported_Motherboards> [11]
>
> No, it's the coreboot project/group. The FSF has nothing to do with it.
>
>> It has two Free & Open Source BIOS: One, thanks to AMD engineer
>> Yinghai Lu who released GPL-licensed code, and the other is from
>> *LinuxBIOS*, a Free Software project.
>
> Really? Yinghai contributed his code to coreboot. Only one implementation.
>
>> The modifications and determination of payload are, I think, challenging.
>
> It depends on what you want. SeaBIOS is pretty much what everyone wants
> nowadays.
>
>> The FSF page makes this quite clear.
>
> coreboot, not FSF.
>
>> It comes in about 4 different forms, one with SPI.
>
> No. Two with SPI.
>
>> LinuxBIOS runs on many embedded boards, for example the [...] OLPC
>> "XO" laptop ([6] laptop.org) .
>
> No longer on the OLPC.
>
>
>
>
>> My question remains, which 64-bit, coreboot board would be best for a
>> fully functional desktop ?
>
> The Asus M2V-MX SE. It even works without a video BIOS, giving you
> probably the most free solution with integrated graphics and 64bit.
>
>> Would you expect trouble with it ?
>
> No board is completely tested. There will always be some corner case
> that is untested and/or not working yet. That even applies to
> proprietary BIOS.
>
> If you have no way to recover from a bad flash, you should not reflash
> or update any BIOS, regardless of whether it is open source or not.
>
>
> Regards,
> Carl-Daniel
>
>
> P.S. RMS thinks a closed source BIOS is OK as long as it is stored in a
> real non-reflashable ROM because it is no longer software but hardware.
>
> -- 
> http://www.hailfinger.org/
> 





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