Ian Eure <[email protected]> writes:

> Hi Noé,
>
> Noé Lopez via "Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System 
> distribution." <[email protected]> writes:
>
>> Hey everyone,
>>
>> I recently borrowed a Thinkpad Gen9 X1 from the Guix Foundation
>> (thanks!).
>>
>> I was expecting the nonfree wifi, which wouldn’t be an 
>> issue. But I was
>> quite surprised at the nonfree audio!
>>
>> Any chance I can get some music on it? I suppose the jack port 
>> will not
>> function, would it work with some usb C headphones, or is it a 
>> “you
>> don’t have a sound card” kind of situation?
>
> Since the X1 Carbon 7th Gen, these laptops have required Sound 
> Open Firmware (sof-firmware) for correctly functioning audio.  An 
> increasing number of Intel laptops are also going this route.
>
> My understanding is that, while the firmware source itself is 
> Free, it’s not usable in practice because the firmware binary must 
> be signed with a hardware vendor key to be loaded.  As such, only 
> precompiled firmware supplied by Intel works.
>
>
> I suppose it’s better than opaque blobs with no source, but it’s 
> equally frustrating, and since a usable binary cannot be 
> bootstrapped from source, it can’t be included in Guix.
>

Terrible! I suppose even if you could reproduce the binary from source
and reuse the signature, you wouldn’t really have the freedom to modify.

>
> The binary firmware is available in some third-party channels, if 
> the the situation is tolerable to you.  Otherwise, as Ricardo 
> suggests, USB-connected audio peripherals are an alternate 
> approach.
>
>   -- Ian

Hi Ian and Ricardo,

Thank you for your answers.

I guess I’ll get some earbuds, or listen to music with another device.

Have a nice day,
Noé

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