Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New laptop - AMD or Intel?

[Caveman Al Toraboran]

‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
On Wednesday, March 11, 2020 11:17 PM, james  wrote:

> On 3/9/20 2:53 PM, Michael wrote:
>
> Intel/nvidia sold their souls to satan, a long time ago, from my
> perspective as a christian, ymmv.

[Citation needed].

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New laptop - AMD or Intel?

[james]

On 3/9/20 2:53 PM, Michael wrote:

On Monday, 9 March 2020 18:08:54 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:

On 2020-03-09, Mark Knecht  wrote:

Would that be the consensus of the group here?


After decades of buying AMD, over the past 5 years or so all my
machines gradually shifted to Intel.

So you can probably bet _that's_ not what you want...


My thoughts on the same topic:

I have not seen *laptop* OEMs offering BIOS/UEFI firmware updates (which would
include any applicable CPU microcode updates) for any longer than 18 months
from the day of releasing their laptops onto the market.  


I cannot comment on the update/release cycle, but, I've been buying HP 
laptops, for decades, and never had any issues. About half are pure 
gentoo, the other half dual boot, some form of Windows and gentoo.




Desktop MoBo OEMs
are usually better, I've received firmware updates on ASUS MoBos for 5 years
or so, with continuous improvements on stability and performance.

If the laptop's MoBo firmware is flash-able with coreboot you're in (partial)
luck.  You still need microcode binary blobs and for these you are at the
mercy of the CPU manufacturers.  With the Intel debacle over the last couple
of years I realised their interest to keeping us as customers is limited to <
5 years.  


Absolutely spot on.



Beyond that they expect us to throw our PCs in the recycling bin and
buy their latest offering, which errm ... hold on!  o_O  As we just found out
Intel's latest ROM offering is compromised straight off the production line
and given their prior form I wouldn't think they would rush to recall and
replace their borked hardware any time soon.



I only push the 'edge' when clients or employers are paying for it. The 
amount of work to get a gentoo install robustly happy, is orders of 
magnitude greater (imho), than the dollars initially allocated for 
hardware. So the robustness of long term usage, is the only issue for 
me; ymmv.


AMD is the least work, compared to a collective of embedded/ARM-64bit 
systems.  But this list could change that, in short order, if we 
collasce around a a list of packages, and semantics for easy to install 
gentoo on 64 bit arm systems.


Intel/nvidia sold their souls to satan, a long time ago, from my 
perspective as a christian, ymmv.




Are AMD that much better?  They probably are, but not by much.



Orders of magnitude better, when you consider the total cost/pain of 
Install/Maintenance  of ownership.




Both Intel and AMD are now only offering CPU/APUs with embedded OOB
coprocessors (ME/PSP) and many of the vulnerabilities revealed over the last
few years are caused by these backdoors at the heart of the PC.



It's orders of magnitude worst than you are alluding to.



Since I don't feel comfortable running a machine designed to be controlled/
controllable remotely before my OS of choice has even booted up, I am not keen
on spending my money with either of these corporates. 



Well, I'm afraid you have not fathomed the entire truth. Deep inside 
MOST RF chipsets, there are 'state-machines' and much, much more, mixed 
with 'multi-spectral' thin/noise communication channels to the 
governments of the top 10 countries and they do as they please, with 
your...



The good news is they are not engaged with small fry, evil-or-good does 
not matter. But, others that discover their old technologies, are able 
to harass, steal and compromise most system in current usage.



You can make your networks, systems and operational semantics unique, so 
it is not trivial or worth the efforts to monitor you deeply. MS idiots 
are deeply comprised between their cell phones and windows system, to 
the point of no-return. Gentooers and a few other distros, can just make 
it a pain for the top-echelon of hackers, including nation states, to be 
bothered with your systems.


If you are 'evil': stay mobile, use multi-path and constantly 
trade/swap/buy new systems, registered to different buyers, as fast as 
you can. But those folks are rarely 'brought in' as when they are 
'caught'. They are most easily turned and release data to the agencies 
and government and top (billion dollar+) folks, routinely.




At some point I'll look
at saving up for a POWER9 workstation, which at least runs coreboot, but I
have no solution at this stage for a laptop and not much hope Intel or AMD are
going to change their design policy anytime soon.



Governments would not allow them to totally support honorable citizens 
of any nation. It going to take a US Presidential candidate that 'gets 
it' to step forward and change the swamp. Trump is no saint, and 
he's clueless about technology. But he is trying to clean up a few 
things, and look at the discord that generates. They are masters at 
deception, and multitude of intellectual/well-educated are also deceived 
by what's going on, they buy-in wholsale, rather that using a bit of 
intellectual robustness in that emotional belief. Just look at the 
climate noise.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New laptop - AMD or Intel?

[Rich Freeman]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 2:28 PM Manuel McLure  wrote:
>
> On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 11:09 AM Grant Edwards  
> wrote:
>>
>> On 2020-03-09, Mark Knecht  wrote:
>>
>> > Would that be the consensus of the group here?
>
> My understanding is that AMD is currently leading both in raw performance as 
> well as bang-for-buck.
>

That is generally my understanding as well, at least for
desktop/server situations when you're buying parts.

For a laptop you really have to look at the whole package.  Raw CPU
perf-per-dollar is often not the biggest concern with a laptop.  As
long as it meets your performance specs you're mostly going to be
worried about form, battery, and so on.  So, I really wouldn't obsess
over AMD vs Intel.

I have been buying all AMD lately for my regular hosts and do my own
builds.  My only recent laptop is a combo form that runs Intel,
because it was the form I wanted (Acer Switch running Win10 and a
bunch of Win-specific software).  You're probably going to find more
Intel options in this space in any case.

-- 
Rich

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New laptop - AMD or Intel?

[Michael]

On Monday, 9 March 2020 18:08:54 GMT Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2020-03-09, Mark Knecht  wrote:
> > Would that be the consensus of the group here?
> 
> After decades of buying AMD, over the past 5 years or so all my
> machines gradually shifted to Intel.
> 
> So you can probably bet _that's_ not what you want...

My thoughts on the same topic:

I have not seen *laptop* OEMs offering BIOS/UEFI firmware updates (which would 
include any applicable CPU microcode updates) for any longer than 18 months 
from the day of releasing their laptops onto the market.  Desktop MoBo OEMs 
are usually better, I've received firmware updates on ASUS MoBos for 5 years 
or so, with continuous improvements on stability and performance.

If the laptop's MoBo firmware is flash-able with coreboot you're in (partial) 
luck.  You still need microcode binary blobs and for these you are at the 
mercy of the CPU manufacturers.  With the Intel debacle over the last couple 
of years I realised their interest to keeping us as customers is limited to < 
5 years.  Beyond that they expect us to throw our PCs in the recycling bin and 
buy their latest offering, which errm ... hold on!  o_O  As we just found out 
Intel's latest ROM offering is compromised straight off the production line 
and given their prior form I wouldn't think they would rush to recall and 
replace their borked hardware any time soon.

Are AMD that much better?  They probably are, but not by much.

Both Intel and AMD are now only offering CPU/APUs with embedded OOB 
coprocessors (ME/PSP) and many of the vulnerabilities revealed over the last 
few years are caused by these backdoors at the heart of the PC.

Since I don't feel comfortable running a machine designed to be controlled/
controllable remotely before my OS of choice has even booted up, I am not keen 
on spending my money with either of these corporates.  At some point I'll look 
at saving up for a POWER9 workstation, which at least runs coreboot, but I 
have no solution at this stage for a laptop and not much hope Intel or AMD are 
going to change their design policy anytime soon.

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: New laptop - AMD or Intel?

[Manuel McLure]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020 at 11:09 AM Grant Edwards 
wrote:

> On 2020-03-09, Mark Knecht  wrote:
>
> > Would that be the consensus of the group here?
>
>
>
My understanding is that AMD is currently leading both in raw performance
as well as bang-for-buck.

-- 
Manuel A. McLure WW1FA  
...for in Ulthar, according to an ancient and significant law,
no man may kill a cat.   -- H.P. Lovecraft

[gentoo-user] Re: New laptop - AMD or Intel?

[Grant Edwards]

On 2020-03-09, Mark Knecht  wrote:

> Would that be the consensus of the group here?

After decades of buying AMD, over the past 5 years or so all my
machines gradually shifted to Intel.

So you can probably bet _that's_ not what you want...

-- 
Grant Edwards   grant.b.edwardsYow! I know th'MAMBO!!
  at   I have a TWO-TONE CHEMISTRY
  gmail.comSET!!