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

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

#231

Post by tpearson-raptor »

madez wrote: post #230
tpearson-raptor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ma…

Let me take this opportunity to ask you a question here after you making clear the problems you see. Hardware becomes more complex and can include internal software that from a user perspective is just part of the hardware. But in fact, it is software running doing complex things outside of the oversight and control of the user. Do you have plans to not just have open software but also open hardware? Do you hope to o…

Actually, yes! We're closely monitoring the development progress of the open toolchains for various FPGAs; with POWER ISA now being open for implementation by anyone anywhere, I could easily see a future where extremely sensitive work is seamlessly moved from a large closed ASIC like the current IBM POWER chips to a completely software compatible, but significantly slower, soft SoC running in an FPGA. Or even an ASIC, if methods are eventually developed to verify the ASICs match the input design files at scale (i.e. non-destructive testing).

This seamless transition is one of the key benefits of an open ISA in my mind; development and testing of algorithms can be handled on the closed but top of the line (i.e. extremely powerful) ASIC, then when sensitive data is being handled that same binary can literally be run without changes on the soft core or other slower, but open, system. You could even compile on the slower ultra-trusted system, and test the binary on the larger ASIC -- lots of interesting possibilities here!

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

#232

Post by tpearson-raptor »

dhanvanthri wrote: post #222
dhanvanthri wrote: post #204

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 hat…

I'm not able to update my post, so I'll leave my edit here: EDIT: If I wanted an ALMOST foss laptop, I would buy a laptop and coreboot it myself. The reason that it's exciting for a company to be doing something like this is because they have leverage in their decisions that I don't as a customer (custom cpu, custom components, choosing components with open firmware that already have good interoperability on the plat…

You might be ascribing quite a bit more leverage to System76 than they actually have here. No one is going to get Intel or AMD to allow open PSP/ME firmware -- AIUI even Google, with the truckloads of chips they buy, isn't able to influence that decision at either x86 vendor. Plus, System76 isn't the ODM -- that's Clevo from what I understand, so their influence on the two x86 CPU vendor(s) will be so far removed as to be quite insignificant IME.

Now, offering something else (ARM, RISC-V, POWER, anything but x86) as a truly open source alternative, then seeing if there was any reaction, might start to apply some small degree of leverage. Definitely there would be more potential opportunities to meaningfully discuss design goals with silicon vendors other than Intel and AMD. Who knows, maybe this could still happen...it'd be pretty easy / cheap to get some POWER desktop offerings lined up based on existing mainboards, and Clevo might be persuaded to do an ARM laptop design based on one of the Chromebook SoCs... ;)

With our baseline blob-free systems, we picked parts that were firmware-free, had open firmware, or could have open firmware written in the future. This is why we don't have onboard 100Gbe, Thunderbolt, or other interfaces that would require relinquishing control of the system to an external vendor. However, the resulting products are quite functional as both PCs and servers, with no real complaints or concerns over the I/O given the multiple PCIe Gen 4 slots available. My understanding is that very few ODMs do this, as they don't want to make that tradeoff, but this is how you apply leverage to silicon vendors long term. And you know what? It's working (outside the GPU sphere at least) -- Raptor isn't the only one pushing hard on these topics from the OpenPOWER side, and so far we've been able to get the silicon we need for our current product lines.

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

#233

Post by swebs »

ckdarby wrote: post #156

Worst company to buy a Linux laptop from. I attempted to purchase a laptop from them in the past and got hit with crazy duties even though the wording on the site made it appear that there were none. Simply better to buy a certified Dell laptop such as: Latitude 7490 or Latitude 7480

What country did you order to?

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

#234

Post by rvense »

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #227
rvense wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I gave that comment a downvote because I thought it was disrespectful. System76 have been providing practical solutions for running free software on available hardware for years now. That does indeed deserve kudos, even from you. Keeping a kilowatt of computing power running at all times at home and connecting to it with a dumb ChromeOS terminal as you're suggesting is quite honestly not a viable solution for many pe…

That may be. However, I was using Linux on bog-standard computers before System76 was even founded -- preinstalling Linux on a computer isn't exactly revolutionary, and it's in a completely different league from the work that has been required to bring up entire new CPUs (!) to compete with the increasingly locked x86 systems. No idea where you're getting a kilowatt from. My desktop uses maybe 120W or so, with a lot…

> That may be. However, I was using Linux on bog-standard computers before System76 was even founded -- preinstalling Linux on a computer isn't exactly revolutionary

System76 is making free software computing more attractive and available. You might think of what they do as easier than what you do, and you might disagree with the way they prioritize security over other factors in their products, but I still think it's pretty bad of you to imply that what they're doing is not valuable to this community.

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

#235

Post by tpearson-raptor »

rvense wrote: post #234
tpearson-raptor wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be. However, I was using Linux on bog-standard computers before System76 was even founded -- preinstalling Linux on a computer isn't exactly revolutionary, and it's in a completely different league from the work that has been required to bring up entire new CPUs (!) to compete with the increasingly locked x86 systems. No idea where you're getting a kilowatt from. My desktop uses maybe 120W or so, with a lot…

> That may be. However, I was using Linux on bog-standard computers before System76 was even founded -- preinstalling Linux on a computer isn't exactly revolutionary System76 is making free software computing more attractive and available. You might think of what they do as easier than what you do, and you might disagree with the way they prioritize security over other factors in their products, but I still think it'…

OK, I think I may have been misunderstood...

What they are doing in that space is valuable. However, with just a bit more tweaking, they could offer something a whole lot more valuable in parallel, and leave this whole semi-open x86 issue behind. If they were to offer even a couple of actually open source firmware systems, and indicate somewhere in the marketing that the x86 boxes are only partly open source, that would not only eliminate the entire controversy here but also allow them to take the next logical step in open software. If their core mission has basically been to make open source easy to consume, that's a worthy goal; why not go a bit further and make open source on open hardware with fully open firmware just as easy to consume?

Clearly there's demand, from the comments in this thread alone!

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

#237

Post by madez »

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #231
madez wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me take this opportunity to ask you a question here after you making clear the problems you see. Hardware becomes more complex and can include internal software that from a user perspective is just part of the hardware. But in fact, it is software running doing complex things outside of the oversight and control of the user. Do you have plans to not just have open software but also open hardware? Do you hope to o…

Actually, yes! We're closely monitoring the development progress of the open toolchains for various FPGAs; with POWER ISA now being open for implementation by anyone anywhere, I could easily see a future where extremely sensitive work is seamlessly moved from a large closed ASIC like the current IBM POWER chips to a completely software compatible, but significantly slower, soft SoC running in an FPGA. Or even an ASIC…

That is exciting! Open and well-documented FPGAs are definitely useful and very interesting to have in a device. Have you looked into OpenPiton [0], PULP [1], BOOM [2], or lowRISC [3]? While I'm hopeful that you find these projects personally interesting, I'm also looking forward to eventually see them in devices. Sorry for not listing any open POWER CPU/SoC projects as I'm not aware of any. Please share if you know any.

[0] https://github.com/PrincetonUniversity/openpiton [1] https://github.com/pulp-platform [2] https://github.com/riscv-boom/riscv-boom [3] https://www.lowrisc.org/

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

#238

Post by tpearson-raptor »

madez wrote: post #237
tpearson-raptor wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, yes! We're closely monitoring the development progress of the open toolchains for various FPGAs; with POWER ISA now being open for implementation by anyone anywhere, I could easily see a future where extremely sensitive work is seamlessly moved from a large closed ASIC like the current IBM POWER chips to a completely software compatible, but significantly slower, soft SoC running in an FPGA. Or even an ASIC…

That is exciting! Open and well-documented FPGAs are definitely useful and very interesting to have in a device. Have you looked into OpenPiton [0], PULP [1], BOOM [2], or lowRISC [3]? While I'm hopeful that you find these projects personally interesting, I'm also looking forward to eventually see them in devices. Sorry for not listing any open POWER CPU/SoC projects as I'm not aware of any. Please share if you know…

Microwatt is the first fully open POWER core:

https://github.com/antonblanchard/microwatt

It's also structured very well, quite clean for learning purposes etc. The current goal so far as I know is to perfect this core, and fork for a more complex / powerful variant. Maybe by the time that's done, the open FPGA tooling will have caught up enough to be able to run a usefully fast (~200MHz) POWER soft core, all in FPGA logic...

I'd strongly prefer a ppc64 core over a RISC-V core for one simple reason: we have a wide deployed base of very powerful ppc64 machines, and not having to keep cross compilers and related environments around is a massive streamlining step that we don't even know the full effects of yet (it hasn't been legal until now to have the SoC under development running the same architecture as the high end workstations and servers used to develop [for] it). The demo of using mainline GCC on a POWER box to build a binary for the Microwatt (that would also run on the host with KVM, if desired, for fast trace and debug) was most impressive.

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

#239

Post by kop316 »

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #177
kop316 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the thoughtful (and quick) response! That was sadly what I was afraid of. Normally I wouldn't bother but I'm going back to school, and sadly the Novena I have just isn't supported anymore (I tried updating u-boot/kernel myself for a while, ended up not being worth the hassle).

My best recommendation might be a bit odd, but here goes... Can you put a POWER "base station" of sorts in your dorm / apartment and use a low power secure terminal, like a corebooted C201, to access it over an encrypted link? I've done something like this when I had to travel last -- was able to maintain a stable link back to one of my POWER machines so the lack of local computing power on the laptop didn't matter.…

Heh, that's an interesting idea! I'll have to look into finding a C201. Finding a POWER base station shouldn't be too hard to find.

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

#240

Post by Iv »

tpearson-raptor wrote: post #224
Iv wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because not everything is about FSF-purity standards. Running a profitable company while providing as many open packages as possible is commendable. Pushing to open more is. But jeez, would it hurt to show some love to people who genuinely do care at least a bit about open firmware? And yes, a lot of us do love OSS but also have clients who require windows compatibility. Some of us do deep learning and need good GPU/…

I still don't understand why you would even care about the firmware if you're running Windows. To me, that would be like building a fortified, ultra-secure rear doorway into a run down barn with a gaping hole where the front doors used to be. If these efforts were even potentially likely to result in open x86 systems someday, I wouldn't be as opposed to them as I am now. But when you have both x86 silicon vendors on…

For the same reason I cared to run linux even before we had open BIOS. Would you have been shouting at young Torvalds that he was wasting his time trying to write a free OS in a world of proprietary hardware?

We won't get to a fully open ecosystem in a day. It wont be a single project, and the more experimental parts you add to the platform, the higher the cost you pay in instability, complexity of maintenance, and performances.

I am not always running windows. But I have it installed for when I have to test aginst it.

I am not a dissident, a journalist or a spy, so my threat model is not the NSA or PCC prying on my contact list.

My threat model is the scenario "Microsoft and a random hardware vendor team up to make sure can never work on linux" which history has shown to be a credible one.

Actors like System 76 fight against it and I am grateful.

Getting CPUs, motherboards, GPU and drive drivers provably clean and incapable of spying is a magnitude harder, starts being feasible, but so far I am not in a category where I absolutely need that. I am pretty happy that some people start offering that too but it helps no one to pretend that people working on these parallel lines are somehow opposed. That's a self-defeating attitude!

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