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posted by CoolHand on Sunday June 07 2015, @03:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the no-intel-ligence dept.

Intel has often been portrayed as the golden child within the Linux/BSD community and by those desiring a fully-free system without tainting their kernel with binary blobs while wanting a fully-supported open-source driver. The Intel Linux graphics driver over the years hasn't required any firmware blobs for acceleration, compared to AMD's open-source driver having many binary-only microcode files and Nouveau also needing blobs — including firmware files that NVIDIA still hasn't released for their latest GPUs. However, beginning with Intel Skylake and Broxton CPUs, their open-source driver will now too require closed-source firmware. The required "GuC" and "DMC" firmware files are for handling the new hardware's display microcontroller and workload scheduling engine. These firmware files are explicitly closed-source licensed and forbid any reverse-engineering. What choices are left for those wanting a fully-free, de-blobbed system while having a usable desktop?

Time to revive the Open Graphics Project...?

(those binary blobs may contain root kits)


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:52AM

    by TheRaven (270) on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:52AM (#193179) Journal
    Not sure why this was moderated Disagree. Wayland is probably not very on-topic, but it definitely is misleading. X.org and Wayland both sit on top of the DRI drivers, and these drivers need the blob firmware to work.
    --
    sudo mod me up
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Insightful=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:42PM (#193248)

    The Troll and Spam mods were always abused and misused. Now that there's also Disagree, it too is bound to be misused all the time, too.