[coreboot] greetings and laptop questions

[Nico Huber]

On 10.10.2017 01:54, Youness Alaoui wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 6:15 PM, Taiidan at gmx.com <Taiidan at gmx.com> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> (I also am looking at system76 and Purism but I am bit leery of spending a
>>> lot with a small / new company - comments appreciated)
>>
>> Purism dishonestly markets their products - while they claim that their
>> laptops "respect freedom and privacy" their version of coreboot is nothing
>> more than a wrapper layer for intel FSP (binary blob that does all the
>> hardware init) which is next to pointless for the amount of money you would
>> spend on one as all it does is move trust from vendor to OEM not avoiding
>> the hypothetical OEM firmware backdoors.
>>
>> System76 is a fine choice if all you want is a laptop that runs linux
>> without difficulty.
>>
> 
> I don't get why you constantly try to discredit Purism and insult
> everything we do. You complain about coreboot being "useless" because
> it uses FSP, but you fail to mention that anything using coreboot will
> use the FSP unless it's 10 year old hardware (Sandybridge is the
> latest FSP-free supported CPU).

Please keep the dimension right, newest is Ivy Bridge and that is 5
years old.

> The original email asked about a
> coreboot port, not a libreboot port. Every time I see purism
> mentioned, you have to jump in to insult and dishonestly say that
> Purism is dishonest. If you want to claim bullshit like that, at least
> find something real and concrete to back it up. I've ignored you many
> times, but I'm fed up of your one-man vendetta against Purism. What
> happened to you for you to have so much hate against us?

It's not him alone, you might remember our discussion about it (it
ended with you writing poems that I didn't even had the time to read
in the end, please don't do that again).

> 
> Extremely funny how you then say that System76 is "a fine choice"
> considering that System76 doesn't even come with coreboot, and even if
> it did come with coreboot, it would of course, still depend on the
> FSP. Also, System76 hardware depends on components which do require
> binary blobs, as opposed to Purism laptops, so I don't get why
> System76 is "a fine choice" if Purism isn't.

It's pretty simple, System76 seems to advertise what say sell, Purism
doesn't. I'd say they do most things right, but not the advertisement.
Most Linux supporting vendors are honest about their products. Yet,
Purism makes claims such as:

   "Only by selecting each and every chip in our Librem laptops can
    we guarantee your privacy, security and freedom are protected."

Where I still argue, it's the opposite with Intel inside.

Everything else, they seem to do alright. I'd fully support them if
they'd stop the false advertisement of being super secure. They are
not, just a little better than the rest (by hardware design, don't
know about the details of their software and how secure the hard-
ware is configured).

So my conclusion, Purism draws customers from other Linux supporting
vendors with dishonest marketing. If that doesn't bother you, fine.
But please don't get angry if it bothers honest people.

Nico