On 18-11-13 14:23, Patrick Georgi wrote:
Am 17.11.2013 21:46, schrieb Alex:
[Broken record warning] What if, somehow, the community gathered a few
brains, talked to a vendor, and convinced them to put coreboot on a
yet-to-be-released product? It would almost seem like the community
would do most of the work for free. What sort of responses have we
received in the past with this approach? System 76, ThinkPenguin,
Pudget, etc... have we tried any of them? They have sleek systems, and
at least the first two value openness more than the average.
Those three list Intel based notebooks only (not even a token AMD device).
Even worse, some have nVidia hardware in it making them even less
attractive (yes Nuveou is progressing nicely, this is true).
From the point of view of free firmware, all of them are unsuitable,
since free (and open, and trustable) Intel firmware implementations are
only available for museum class^W^Wlong-term support hardware.
I think the only x86 notebook with completely free firmware these days
that can be bought easily is
http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-coreboot/
(featuring those Intel museum chips)
And I guess doing something like that group is the only working approach
for now: Pick some notebook (something recent), free its firmware, sell
the pre-modded boxes (and publish numbers!).
If you manage to sell significant volumes (which shouldn't be all that
large), that might turn some heads.
But then we get back to the start of this thread, to little people
actually care (or know off) coreboot.
There are some issues with this approach: You're limited in your choice
of base hardware (likely AMD/Via chipsets only, the EC must be
manageable with reasonable effort) and it must be available for some
time (no fun doing a port for 2 months, then selling the notebook for
another 4, after which it's taken off the market, and you have to start
from scratch).
And, of course, when doing this, you carry the usual entrepreneurial risk.
while hardware stays around a lot longer then it used to (most are fast
enough), finding one that can be easily supported is hard.
AMD should "develop" (e.g. get some ODM to supply it) some reference
laptops and donate some to coreboot devs. Pitch in a bit to help where
needed and I smell a winner. Since AMD belives in coreboot and support
coreboot, making it actually happen would be in their own interest no?
Oliver
Patrick
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