Hi all,
Thank you for your suggestions, I have looked at the motherboards
suggested which put me on to the path of finding one I can live with.
Gerald pointed me to the Asus M5A97 which is probably the board I liked
best (or an upgrade to the M5A99X-EVO**), however it is not explicitly
listed as being a supported board for coreboot. I imagine it will be be
supported soon, but I don't want to risk it so....
looks like I will be going with its little brother the Asus M5A88-M
which appears to be a slightly less capable version, but has full
coreboot support.
So basically it seems I have fulfilled everything I want, perhaps not
out of the box, but after a quick flash, I should be able to completely
avoid the secure boot crap, and have a full system of freedom loving
software.
The board comes with onboard ati graphics, so it will also mean I can
put off buying the graphics card for a couple of weeks too :-)
Now I just need a solid opencl implementation in the free driver and I
am set.
There is still a small chance I may choose the more capable board and
hope it makes the coreboot list soon, still not 100% decided, but
leaning towards the M5A88-M for day 1 Coreboot.
Oh, and to Michael, I thought yahoo bought Zimbra so they can run open
source mail servers :-P
You are right though, I plan to run my own mail server, but need a
freedom loving motherboard to run it on :-D
Cheers
Tuxta
On 19/07/12 14:10, Steven Tucker wrote:
Hi all,
an update on where I am at.
Interestingly the easiest way to find a freedom loving computer, is
actually with this laptop
http://www.lemote.com/en/products/Notebook/2010/0310/112.html
Meets all requirements, apparently it is the laptop Richard Stallman
uses.
However, while I will likely get one in the future, I am still after a
good desktop machine.
I have come to the conclusion that I won't get a free bios, but I can
select a motherboard that is reported to work well with Coreboot, and
flash it myself.
There are a number of boards that both meet my technical needs, and
also support Coreboot, the problem is that I am still going through
the components to determine what they need. While I do want to support
AMD, it is looking like it will be easier going the Intel path, as the
motherboards that support AMD seem to have more a of a mish-mash of
components.
Anyway, just an update.
I'll let you know how I go, and what compromises I end up making if I
have to make them.
Cheers
Tuxta
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