[coreboot] for more working mainboards

[ron minnich]

I was talking to a friend about this the other day.

Back when I were a mere lad, one could buy chips and build boards with
CPUs that were every bit as good as what any company could sell you. I
interned at HP working with engineers on boards, and I saw both sides,
the company and the garage/basement. There was not a lot of
difference. I built boards with many different microprocessors, and
even designed DRAM controllers. It was doable.

I got a chance to watch the very talented engineers in the chromebook
part of Google for two years.After a few months watching them fix
problems that were very subtle, I found myself realizing that the era
of the Apple ][ was gone for good. I just don't see how "we can build
our own mainboards" model gets you to high quality, fast, low power
boards. I'd love to be shown wrong. But this "we should start a
company" thing that has been appearing in this list for 15 years is
now less practical than it was in 2000.

Sorry, I don't like it either.

If you really want a high quality, blob-free, open platform, you're
probably best off with ARM, and a good  choice is the new Acer 13:
coreboot, no blobs, and it's really fine hardware at least for me.

ron