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Libreboot Sees First New Release In Nearly 5 Years, Supports More Old Motherboards
Libreboot as the Coreboot downstream focused on providing a fully open-source BIOS/firmware replacement without any black boxes / binary blobs is out with a new release. The prior tagged release of Libreboot was all the way back in 2016 while has now been succeeded by a new release albeit in testing form.
Libreboot 20210522 allows more Intel GM45 / X3X era hardware to work with this fully open-source alternative to proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware. New boards supported by this Libreboot release include the Acer G43T-AM3, Lenovo ThinkPad R500, Lenovo ThinkPad X301, and Intel G43T-AM3. Yeah, it's quite hard in 2021 to get excited about Socket 775 motherboards or 45nm Penryn laptops. Libreboot is largely limited to supporting these outdated platforms due to its focus on being fully open-source and not using any Intel FSP binaries, etc.
Previously: Replace your Proprietary BIOS with Libreboot
AMD to Consider Coreboot/Libreboot Support
Libreboot Applies to Rejoin GNU
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25 2021, @03:58PM (7 children)
POWER9 [raptorcs.com] is an option, although the price point is obviously out of reach for many people. Raptor Engineering actually did the work to implement several of the boards currently supported by libreboot.
Unfortunately Leah seems very good at pissing off everyone who tries to work with her, which does not inspire confidence in the long-term future of libreboot as a project. Getting this release out helps to restore that confidence. I wish her the best of luck.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 25 2021, @07:53PM (5 children)
Leah Rowe actually signed the pro-Stallman open letter over on github when that became a thing. I had to do a double-take, but despite that rather public controversy over the FSF/GNU trans employee who got fired, she's come out backing him over lambasting him. Thought that as an interesting bit of trivia for anyone hear who hadn't noticed it before.
With that said, I think open firmware in the x86 ecosystem as well as peripheral devices is effectively dead, and show of starting up an entirely new technology base we only have less and less security and anonymity to look forward to in our hardware going forward. Everything is leaking UUID or device serial numbers now so without operating systems intentionally designed to sanitize that information and assurances that backdoor 'identification instructions' aren't included, there is no way to have user-trustable hardware using modern systems anymore.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday May 25 2021, @09:44PM (4 children)
On that note, I just received yet another menacing "copyright infringement" notice today. Said they've continued to receive complaints. My ISP put my account on "quarantine", as if a few accusations of piracy is grounds for suspecting my computers might be "sick". Forced me to click on a button to acknowledge that I had received the warning, before restoring service. I thought at first it was a technical problem, and am angry to learn it is actually a political problem.
I am not sure what to do about it. Talking to the ISP seems totally pointless. Their warning was packed with doublespeak, of which that word "quarantine" is an example. I can change to a different ISP. Perhaps that would clear the record. Ideally, I'd like to see ended permanently all pretensions that these "owners" think entitles them to monitor and accuse people of piracy, and think gives them the right and moral justification to shut down Internet service. We know their fondest wish is that the entire Internet be shut down. I'd like to see copyright ended instead.
I am also feeling considerable hesitance about buying a newer car. I don't want my car to spy on and monitor me, nor record my every move. Airline pilots live with black boxes, but commuters shouldn't have to, not until a lot of protections are in place. I can imagine a scenario in which a police officer pulls me over, and asks "Do you know how fast you were going?" and my car responds, "Yes, officer, I gave him a verbal warning that he was exceeding the speed limit by 11 mph" and, bam! Speeding ticket! Then it might come out later that my car was mistaken about what the current speed limit was, and that the cop knew I wasn't speeding but had tried that question just to fish for an admission of guilt and had actually pulled me over for something else, a burnt out taillight or some such. But it wouldn't matter, it'd be after the fact. I'd operate on that traitorous car to disable that crap before I drove it again. How far back do you have to go to escape self-monitoring cars? 1980s? Even older than that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 26 2021, @02:23AM (1 child)
Most any car with an airbag (which fires based on an accelerometer signal) will have some "black box" capability that can be read by someone (often only the airbag controller manufacturer, iirc).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 26 2021, @05:25AM
A number of people sued manufacturers because their airbags fired improperly or other safety equipment malfunctioned. In that situation, it wasn't even he-said/she-said but the driver claimed one thing and it was next to impossible to prove they didn't with the closest being experts arguing both ways. Not surprising the manufacturers voluntarily started to add them to cars.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday May 26 2021, @03:13AM (1 child)
Why bother with the cop and the ticket... just have the black box report you directly, and disable the car until you pay the fine!
Had my ISP do something similar ... told me I'd been naughty for downloading something I'd never even heard of.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 26 2021, @05:37AM
We had something like that at the office. IT got a warning that a certain IP of ours was seeding a ton of torrents. We looked through the machines and all the logs to no avail. Finally, we asked which of our addresses it was that was being bad, to try and narrow down the machine that could have caused the problem. So they reply that it is an IP address that we are not assigned statically or dynamically. That was a real headscratcher for ourselves and the person on their side that responded to our escalation of the claim. That particular address is in their AS but wasn't assigned to anyone at the time the complaint covered. Apparently, according to them, that isn't uncommon because they routinely get complaints for all sorts of situations where it would be impossible for that address or customer to be infringing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 26 2021, @08:10PM
It's a dude, man!