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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)
Original Submission
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 07 2015, @09:54AM
There's something even worse going on, than Intel requiring binary blobs. You see its fingerprints everywhere:
- People know their personal information is being bought and sold everywhere, but they don't care
- People know the entire world is teetering on economic collapse, but they don't care
- People know that thanks to UEFI, they'll have trouble installing alternative operating systems, but they don't care
- People know the Linux world has been co-opted and turned into a commodity, but they don't care
...etc...
At some point in the not-to--distant past, people would be getting fired up: arguing, discussing, and looking for solutions, instead we get a tsunami of apathy.
People around here *do* care (which is nice) but one can't help but feel the general computing world has consigned FOSS/Libre software to the dustbin. "Binary blobs? Who cares! As long as I can stream Netflix!"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Sunday June 07 2015, @10:30AM
There's a difference between not caring and not realistically being able to do anything about it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Justin Case on Sunday June 07 2015, @12:06PM
Exactly. There's a thousand things that annoy me about the behavior of lemmings etc. but about the only power I have is to opt out. Go ahead and have your stupid facebook, not for me thank you. But then other people start posting pictures that include me in them, and I'm in FB like it or not. Now you get people who don't know how to email, so if you're not on FB you don't exist to them. Fine. Who needs them? But gradually opting out gets less and less realistic, or even possible. What to do then?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday June 07 2015, @08:22PM
Get important people on a real platform and leave the dead fish in the facebook pool of poor digital hygiene slime.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday June 08 2015, @05:51AM
To care means to have enough time to care...
I propose (again) the following model for society, you judge for yourself if it works.
Whoever they are, people in charge want more than money, more than power (potential), they want control (to apply their power all the time).
To achieve control they suck up time, and money. The point is not to make the rich richer, that's the dreadful commie propaganda. The point is to make the poor poorer and the rich their kapos.
All other cultural, societal system that may affect the individual must be eliminated or reduced to a shallow layer under which the power of money operates.
Back to the topic, there is also the problem/blessing of becoming mainstream. When only mechanics could run a car, you could never have pulled tricks like sealed engines. Now that the car is for everyone you cannot unscrew a broken light without major hassle. That's why my next car, if ever, will be bought in kit.
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