Uncorrectable freedom and security issues on x86 platforms

Daniel Pocock daniel at pocock.pro
Tue Apr 5 08:20:49 UTC 2016


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On 04/04/16 18:42, Tobias Platen wrote:
> Half a year ago I baught a libreboot machine from Minifree, which
> is now my main computer. I own several ARM based computers, with
> processors from Texas Instruments and Allwinner, which I use for
> various other tasks. I'm also interested in PowerPC, as a
> replacement for Intel. Ive heard about a PowerPC notebook[1] as a
> community effort.
> 


This type of practical feedback and action is really underestimated

If every serious free software developer and user goes out and buys at
least one piece of genuinely free hardware and tries to use it for
some aspect of what we do then it will make us much more conscious of
the fact that these platforms need to be supported seriously, even if
we aren't explicitly things developing for them.

The question is, can we make a shortlist of devices that people should
consider buying?  Such a shortlist would probably consider:

- - price and value for money

- - suitability for specific tasks (e.g. compiling, making
presentations, watching movies, office work)

- - warranty and servicing issues, e.g. for laptops
  - can the battery be replaced,
  - how easy is it to get it fixed or replaced
    at short notice if it fails while traveling
    to a conference

- - which distributions are supporting the device seriously and how many
other developers already have something similar, does it have critical
mass

Collating these details for various products in each category (e.g.
laptop, workstation, home server, embedded development board) will
make it much easier for people to overcome whatever inertia keeps them
from acquiring free hardware.

Going beyond that, finding a way to gift such devices to free software
developers could create even more momentum around support for free
hardware.
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