[coreboot] greetings and laptop questions

[Youness Alaoui]

> While I understand your frustration, and agree with the general thrust
> of your email, and disregarding the "10 years", the Samsung Chromebook
> Plus (and many other devices of similar age) beg to differ.
> There are devices from 2016 and 2017 shipping with coreboot and no CPU
> level blobs in the firmware (the only CPU side blob would be the
> kernel's GPU driver).

Sorry, I'm so deep into Intel stuff right now that I completely missed
the possibility of non-x86 hardware. Yes, there is newer hardware with
no blobs in coreboot, my statement is only true for intel-related
hardware. I don't even know about AMD actually, but I believe it's a
similar situation for AMD. But in the case of the Chromebook Plus, I
checked, and it's an ARM based CPU, which is why coreboot is blob free
for it.
The original post was about a laptop to run virtual machines, so I
assume x86 is a requirement, but my statement was about coreboot
itself, not about the laptop requirement, which made it false. Thanks
for the correction!



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

My bad, you're right. The '10 years old' was in reference to ME-less
CPU designs and I confused it with FSP-less coreboot.
As for the ivybridge being the newest, that's again my bad, I used
this to look up when the native intel raminit stopped being supported
;
https://www.coreboot.org/Intel_Native_Raminit#Sandybridge.2FIvybridge
and it said sandybridge/ivybridge, and I thought they were the same,
not one being successor of the other.

I guess that will teach me to email while I'm tired and busy/distracted.



>
>> 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).

You're not hateful from what I could see. You disagree with Purism and
you don't like it, but I haven't seen you jumping at every occasion to
talk bad about it.
As for our last discussion, that's what it was, a discussion, which
unfortunately, I got a little over-verbose in my last response and
killed the discussion, but I don't feel like Taiidan wants to discuss
anything. Either way, I don't plan on opening any new discussions
about Purism here.

>
>>
>> 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.

I disagree with your statement that it's false advertisement and that
it's dishonest marketing. I won't explain why I think you're wrong
here, because :
1 - I already explained it in length in my previous long email that
you never read
2 - It doesn't market itself as "being super secure" as you said, but
rather as being "security and privacy focused", which it is. You are
free to find anywhere on the website where it says security or privacy
without stating "a focus on" or "<attribute>-focused" along with it.
2 - It's my opinion/interpretation and you have a different one, and
that's fine, you are entitled to it. Your view/interpretation of a
statement does not mean everyone needs to see it your way and that the
conclusion that it's being dishonest which your drew from it, is going
to be the absolute truth.
3 - By stating that it "bothers honest people", right after saying
that it doesn't bother me, you're implying that I'm not an honest
person (at least that's how I read it) and that kind of statement
doesn't lead to cool headed discussions, so I'll simply withdraw from
this one.

...
Yeay, looks like I managed to not write another long email.