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Intel Skylake & Broxton Graphics Processors To Start Mandating Binary Blobs

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

kaszz writes:

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: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:14PM

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:14PM (#193324) Journal

    LOL - I'm interested in the WAYLAND install geeks convention. Linux is a piece of cake, if you accept default applications. Getting X installed is almost as easy as falling off a log!

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  • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:49PM

    by wantkitteh (3362) on Sunday June 07 2015, @07:49PM (#193336) Homepage Journal

    Glad someone saw the humour ;)

    I know Ubuntu is the current go-to Linux distro when people want to moan, but I recently installed Mint on my latest self-build. Everything worked out of the box. The Intel AC wifi card, the AMD graphics card, the Realtek audio chipset and both ethernet ports, the USB3 controllers from god-knows-who, everything. While I appreciate the political issues around closed-source/open-source hardware drivers for Linux, demanding open-source drivers or nothing when we've finally got to the point where an everything-working-out-of-the-box is even possible could be construed as cutting off your nose to spite your face. As long as drivers of any kind are available, I'll be quite happy to use them*.

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