[coreboot] [RFC] marketing coreboot after recent support of AMD board

[Paul Menzel]

Dear Marc,


Am Donnerstag, den 24.02.2011, 09:36 -0700 schrieb Marc Jones:

> On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 6:18 AM, Paul Menzel wrote:
> > Dear coreboot community,
> >
> >
> > it is really amazing what happened in the last years and especially in
> > the last months. A lot of people came – for me – out of nowhere and did
> > great contributions. Also AMD did great with their latest contributions
> > [1].
> >
> > Today, Scott sent a patch to the list to support the board ASRock E350M1
> > [2, 3, 4]. If I am not mistaken there have been only a few cases, it
> > could be the first, where such a *recent* consumer board is supported by
> > coreboot. And that is the reason I am writing this message.
> >
> > This also means that most of the computer magazines (online – at least
> > in Europe – and print) have not yet published reviews and the board is
> > not yet old enough to be considered by consumers. You guys have more
> > experience than I on how these reviewer networks work, but is there an
> > easy way to get these boards tested by these people with coreboot?
> >
> > I came up with the following steps to be accomplished to reach that
> > goal.
> >
> >     1. Contact ASRock. Does anyone have contacts at ASRock to get
> >        documentation or even hardware or man power?
> >     2. Get Windows running. Scott wrote that Windows does not boot yet.
> >        Since the market share of Windows in the home desktop market is
> >        still the biggest, that would of course be a requirement.
> >     3. Get GNU/Linux running. I think FLOSS users are more open to try
> >        new things. So to get to them, GNU/Linux should at least be able
> >        to boot.
> >     4. Wiki page and feature list. A page in our Wiki [5] should be set
> >        up with detailed instructions on how to create an image, what
> >        features (ACPI, power management, suspend/resume, connectors, …)
> >        work and, when the patch is committed, what revision was tested.
> >     5. Comparison with the vendor BIOS. People of course would only be
> >        interested if coreboot is superior to the vendor BIOS. And I
> >        would imagine that normal users would be most interested in boot
> >        time. Is coreboot faster?
> >     6. Flashrom support or “precompiled” images. To make it easy for
> >        the reviewers and early adopters flashing using Flashrom should
> >        work or precompiled images should be made available, if it is
> >        legally possible, and even flash chips offered or send to the
> >        reviewers which they can easily plug into the board and start
> >        testing. Is there a foundation (e. g. FSF), organization or
> >        cooperation (e. g. Google) which could sponsor to buy like
> >        200(?) spare flash chips, which then can be programmed? What
> >        flash chips are compatible with this board?
> >     7. Contact everybody. When all of the above has been accomplished,
> >        the magazines, reviewing sites, news sites, LUGs, communities
> >        should be informed. Magazines get the chips send to and
> >        consumers can order them from a coreboot developer.
> >
> > Do you think that is a feasible roadmap? If yes, a lot of testing and
> > work needs to be done and Scott, of course, cannot do that alone. So
> > people willing to help, should get a this board, spare flash chips, and
> > start mostly testing. I am not a developer, so I could not help to
> > improve the support, but I could test and maybe even create a live image
> > to flash that image from an USB storage device.
> >
> > It looks difficult though to get this board [6].
> >
> > Another chicken and egg problem is, if this announcement should be made
> > public outside of the coreboot community only after support is complete
> > or before, i. e., are there communities (e. g. FSF) or project
> > developers which would help to support this effort?
> >
> > Unfortunately CeBit is going to already start next week, so we will not
> > be able to show the new support off there.
> >
> >
> > I am looking forward to your thoughts. Thanks,
> >
> > Paul
> >
> >
> > [1] http://www.coreboot.org/News#2011.2F2.2F14_AMD_submits_coreboot_support_for_AMD_Embedded_G-Series_Platforms
> > [2] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063737.html
> > [3] http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1
> > [4] http://notabs.org/pictures/ASRock-E350M1/
> > [5] http://www.coreboot.org/Welcome_to_coreboot
> > [6] http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2011-February/063757.html
> 
> 
> These are all great points. I am also motivated to market coreboot
> better. AMD and Sage are putting effort into press release and blog
> postings this week and around Embedded World next week.

[…]

> I'm excited that you see the potential of coreboot and have thought
> about better ways to help get it recognized and help make it a viable
> choice for system developers, ultimately giving users the choice of
> the software they want to run. I think that the steps you outline are
> not serial, but can be done in parallel. I also think that coreboot
> would see benefit from doing any of the points you have made. If you
> were to take the lead on one or more,  I think others would follow and
> cooperate.It just requires a little momentum. I think that updating
> our wiki with fresh and accurate information would be a great place to
> start. I want to start cross-posting the news, blogs, and press
> releases about coreboot this week on the coreboot wiki news page.

please remember to also let this aggregated by [7].

> Is there one thing on your list that you could lead?

Well I could try to contact ASRock and for example the German Linux
Magazin [8] or Tom’s Hardware [9], that are points 1. and partly 7..

In my opinion it is very important though that the coreboot support of
that board is comparable to the one by the vendor BIOS before
announcements are made, so that one can show a video or comparison
charts of the boot time and so on. That would make people talk about
coreboot and create demand. So hopefully Scott will be able to get
Windows and GNU/Linux booting soon.

Unfortunately I still cannot find the board ASRock E350M1 in stock
anywhere in Germany.

One question, to make this message even longer, is the problems Scott is
having to boot Windows just due to the board port (lack of
documentation(?)) or does the generic new AMD “chipset” code also needs
more work, so that it would be better to wait for another board where
then coreboot could be ported to more quickly after Scott found the
“shortcomings” of the chipset code?


Thanks,

Paul


[7] http://blogs.coreboot.org/
[8] http://www.linux-magazin.de/
[9] http://www.tomshardware.com/
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