AMD has cooperated with the coreboot project so the boards with AMD
technologies are better supported. The problem is AMD has not cooperated with
the free software aspect though and so the 3d acceleration won't work.
Intel on the other hand has cooperated with the free software movement in
releasing proper drivers/firmware for its graphics chipsets although not the
coreboot project.
Unfortunately that leaves us in a hard position and anyone wanting a truly
free system. We've decided not to ship a coreboot system for a few reasons.
One being the costs, availability, and the lack of 3d acceleration.
Remember that coreboot doesn't free your system. It's just one more thing
that can be freed. One of the things most people don't know is that there is
other microcode that is an even bigger issue. Even with a free BIOS (and
assuming you could get a combination of graphics that were free) you are
still not running a 100% free system.
Based on what I've been told by people from the coreboot project (might have
been the lead developer, although this was back in 2008/2009 maybe) the x86
platform isn't ever going to be 100% free. There may be a completely free
solution in the future based on a non-x86 architecture.
There needs to be more people demanding freedom though. The more money that
goes into projects like Trisquel and funds going toward purchasing freedom
friendly hardware the better the chances this will be possible.
Unfortunately most projects which might be able to design and develop a free
system today due to the demand don't care about freedom. They might be mostly
based on free software although they are not taking freedom into
consideration.
It's the one thing we are really pushing. We're moving things forward really
really really slowly. Hopefully things will pick up in the near future. We
are working with other projects that are likely to have more of an impact in
terms of raising money for such projects. Our plan of action is to give back
10% to certain projects based on mostly free software and then another 10% to
free software fund of some sort.
That's what is in the works. It'll probably be officially announced in a few
weeks by a major distribution that I'm not going to name (for obvious
reasons, it is inappropriate for this forum).
