System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware • Hacker News Board

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#201

Post by tpearson-raptor » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 4:58 AM UTC

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #196

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laptop is a large problem still -- mainly due to GPUs. With desktop, we don't have to deal with the issues associated with a soldered-down non-free GPU; the mainboard works blob-free if desired but the user already expects to install a discrete GPU if they need one. With laptops, the GPU has to be integrated, and there are no GPUs in production today that don't require signed firmware (this is due to the DRM contract…

Are ISAs patented or copyrighted?

IANAL, but this is what I've been told:

Both. Copyright applies to some aspects, patents to others, and then you also get into trademark rights. With the US having embraced effectively permanent copyright, ISAs will not be freely able to be implemented unless their owner expressly allows it (my understanding is that the Oracle vs. Google case solidified this thinking).

Fundamentally, that means you get to pick from RISC-V, POWER, or SPARC when selecting a well known ISA for your new device, or start signing licensing agreements (which always come with restrictions and oftentimes significant royalties).

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#202

Post by tpearson-raptor » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:08 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #85

hlandau wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coreboot integrates plenty of blobs via its blobs repository, so "Coreboot builds" does not imply "blob-free".

Then AGESA must be posing some problem for it.

The ancient AGESA open sourced well over a decade ago, then closed down a few years later right about when the PSP started to appear on AMD platforms?

Or do you mean the modern AGESA binary that has zero support whatsoever in coreboot right now?

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#203

Post by ac29 » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:13 AM UTC

madez wrote: post #182

akeck wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is, or includes, the baseband firmware for the actual wifi radio. I believe, but I'm not 100% sure, that the FCC has specific restrictions on how baseband radio firmware gets distributed.

You, and everyone else for that matter, can go and buy a software defined radio (SDR) and play with a radio to your hearts liking. If there is a restriction on redistribution of open down to the radio firmware WiFi devices, then it's dumb. If there is none, please don't spread incorrect speculation that there is.

> You, and everyone else for that matter, can go and buy a software defined radio (SDR) and play with a radio to your hearts liking.

You almost certainly cant transmit legally, though (unless you have a amateur radio license, which lets you do all sorts of stuff with useful amounts of power).

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#204

Post by dhanvanthri » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:38 AM UTC

These computers runs blobs in the firmware and are not fully open source. I understand that modern users want modern performance, and that there is only a niche market for a librebooted computer (mostly due to performance), and as a company, it's systems76's responsibility to meet the market. But solutions exist, and if you are trying to market an open source computer, then give me an open source computer. What I hate most is how the top comment is from Jeremy Soller, but they are literally using this forum as a marketing platform, only responding to the queries that potray their initiative as good, and ignoring the literal highest comment directly under their post. This is so disingenuous, give me true libre laptop. (C-f tpearson-raptor on this post, they even offers a real solution from raptor to try and make this real). I'm grossed out.

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#205

Post by opan » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:38 AM UTC

jakeogh wrote: post #198

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have one. How are you claiming open source firmware when your hardware requires signed, closed source binaries to even begin to boot? I refer specifically to the Intel Management Engine, which incidentally is why we gave up on x86 many years ago. How did you solve the GPU closed, signed firmware problem for discrete GPUs? How about the WiFi card firmware? I understand your decision to try to keep compatibility with…

I want a laptop where the all of the design files are open source. It would be worth a serious premium in addition to the premium I would pay for the open POWER system. The few we have now are maxed out at 4GB. Someone is going to do it...

Have you already seen the MNT Reform? https://mntre.com/reform/

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#206

Post by darkr » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:38 AM UTC

lucb1e wrote: post #123

darkr wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1080p is 16:9. I presume you meant 16:10 (which is also my preference)

I don't understand why we need another competing standard for such a small difference. Given how small the difference is, I'm in favor for whichever one is more common to avoid black bars below media or other ill-fitting content. As far as I can tell, 16:9 is much more common so I am happy to stick with that on any device and resolution.

For anything like text editing, the extra vertical space really does make a difference, even more so in portrait mode.

This becomes less noticeable at higher resolutions and larger sizes (e.g 32”+ @4k native).

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#207

Post by tpearson-raptor » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:38 AM UTC

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #200

Iv wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just wanted to give you some love. It must be really harsh for morale dealing with the OSS crowd who will always consider you don't do enough without recognizing that you are helping building a road where none existed before. Kudos to you!

Honest question: why do you consider System76 to be building new roads by using locked hardware and offering partial open source firmware for it? Wouldn't the new roads kudos be more appropriately given to all of the folks that made real open hardware happen (RISC-V, OpenPOWER, etc.) years before this partly-open-source system announcement went out? In my mind the RISC-V folks especially were real trailblazers in thi…

To the downvoters: I'm guessing you wanted to run Windows 10 "safely" somehow, or sandbox your games. There's almost no other reason to be this stuck on x86; at the end of the day it's just a consumer architecture that some well known privacy disrespecting software requires to run. It's not even that great of an architecture from a technical perspective, it just happens to have the financial weight of the prosumer market behind it right now.

Here's reality:

This laptop won't stop Windows exfiltrating your data. These x86 systems are leaky, they require sizeable amounts of low level binary firmware to even boot, and proper isolation is near impossible. Try sticking a PCIe diagnostic system on an open PCIe slot and sending commands to the WiFi or Ethernet card -- most likely it'll respond [1]. Then consider the firmware in the various controllers attached to the PCIe bus, including your GPU.

It's probably a violation of your game's anticheat system to try to sandbox it. It's definitely a violation of the NVIDIA driver EULA to run it in a virtual machine, unless you pay the enterprise driver license fees and use a server grade adapter. The kind of adapter you won't usually find in a laptop, by the way.

This is a topic that I find very frustrating. We all know you want to do the above. It can't be done without license violations all over the place, or head-in-sand make-believe "security", on modern x86 hardware. No wishing, hoping, etc. will make this change.

[1] Yes, this is known to happen on specific x86 systems that I have personally tried (in that case, it was a malfunctioning GPU writing to the disk controller!). Invalid cross-device access was also tried on a POWER box, where the invalid accesses were blocked and logged as intended.

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#208

Post by shmerl » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:43 AM UTC

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #202

shmerl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then AGESA must be posing some problem for it.

The ancient AGESA open sourced well over a decade ago, then closed down a few years later right about when the PSP started to appear on AMD platforms? Or do you mean the modern AGESA binary that has zero support whatsoever in coreboot right now?

I mean AGESA that's used for new AMD CPUs.

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#209

Post by tpearson-raptor » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:45 AM UTC

shmerl wrote: post #208

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ancient AGESA open sourced well over a decade ago, then closed down a few years later right about when the PSP started to appear on AMD platforms? Or do you mean the modern AGESA binary that has zero support whatsoever in coreboot right now?

I mean AGESA that's used for new AMD CPUs.

OK, that makes sense. And yes, it causes problems for coreboot -- AIUI there are no modern AMD systems supported, because AMD has not allowed use of the AGESA blob in that way.

Re: System76 Will Ship Linux Laptops With Coreboot-Based Open-Source Firmware

#210

Post by tpearson-raptor » Fri, Oct 11, 2019, 5:48 AM UTC

opan wrote: post #205

jakeogh wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want a laptop where the all of the design files are open source. It would be worth a serious premium in addition to the premium I would pay for the open POWER system. The few we have now are maxed out at 4GB. Someone is going to do it...

Have you already seen the MNT Reform? https://mntre.com/reform/

I hadn't, thanks for the link! It's an interesting possibility for a terminal device, though I'd prefer something open ISA -- if that was either POWER or RISC-V vs. ARM, I'd probably pick one up...