Why is the latest AMD hardware unsupported in libreboot?

It seems kind of pointless to continue the Libreboot project if they're not going to work on any modern hardware for the foreseeable future. Their recommended systems are all old and out of production. Fastest recommended laptop seems to be roughly a Core2Duo at 2.0Ghz.

Re: Why is the latest AMD hardware unsupported in libreboot?

#6

Post by aexaey » Wed, Jan 13, 2016, 6:31 PM UTC

Whole page is an enlightening read, with quite a few disappointing discoveries, such as:

  There are several privacy, security and freedom issues
  with [Purism Librem laptops], due to the Intel chipset

Re: Why is the latest AMD hardware unsupported in libreboot?

#7

Post by yuhong » Wed, Jan 13, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #5

mikexstudios wrote: post #2

To be fair, see: https://libreboot.org/faq/#intel

I was wondering this myself. I was wondering why they were focusing so much on AMD when all AMD did was copy Intel's horrible idea. It seems kind of pointless to continue the Libreboot project if they're not going to work on any modern hardware for the foreseeable future. Their recommended systems are all old and out of production. Fastest recommended laptop seems to be roughly a Core2Duo at 2.0Ghz.

They don't even do microcode updates, which is ridiculous when you are running non-free microcode to boot.

Re: Why is the latest AMD hardware unsupported in libreboot?

#8

Post by masida » Wed, Jan 13, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

aexaey wrote: post #6

Whole page is an enlightening read, with quite a few disappointing discoveries, such as: There are several privacy, security and freedom issues with [Purism Librem laptops], due to the Intel chipset

They're probably talking about the wireless network adapter here, not the CPU. If that's what you're implying.

Re: Why is the latest AMD hardware unsupported in libreboot?

#9

Post by web007 » Wed, Jan 13, 2016, 6:40 PM UTC

tl;dr: It's not just AMD, it's anything AMD after 2013 and anything Intel after 2009. So essentially all modern x86 hardware.

Re: Why is the latest AMD hardware unsupported in libreboot?

#10

Post by aexaey » Wed, Jan 13, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

masida wrote: post #8

aexaey wrote: post #6

Whole page is an enlightening read, with quite a few disappointing discoveries, such as: There are several privacy, security and freedom issues with [Purism Librem laptops], due to the Intel chipset

They're probably talking about the wireless network adapter here, not the CPU. If that's what you're implying.

Alas, CPU. Namely ME[1] and FSP/SMM blob [2].

If you are wondering what's wrong with either of them, I would recommend Joanna Rutkowska's research as a starting point [3,4].

[1] https://libreboot.org/faq/#intelme

[2] https://libreboot.org/faq/#fsp

[3] http://blog.invisiblethings.org/papers/2015/x86_harmful.pdf

[4] https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7352-towards_reasonably_trustwor...