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-- OriginalOwner_ [tinyurl.com] writes:

from the gratis-and-libre-firmware dept.

Youness Alaoui of Purism reports [puri.sm]

The good news is: Coreboot is working on the Librem 13. The laptop boots into Linux and most things are working! The only issue I have found so far is that the M.2 SATA port doesn't seem to work properly yet (see below for more info).

- Getting video output

[...]On the BeagleBone Black [...] I figured, "Maybe it's a configuration issue", [...] So I changed that, and flashed Coreboot and when I booted the machine, the video controller worked and I saw the SeaBIOS prompt. Hurray!

- The Curious Case of the M.2 SSD

Unfortunately, once I tried booting Linux, it failed with a "Read Error".

[...]I tried booting PureOS from the USB installation drive instead, and I was able to boot into the live environment without any problems. Wow, first success! PureOS is booting with Coreboot! There was much rejoicing.

[...]SeaBIOS [with] the M.2 SSD [gave wildly inconsistent results].

[...]My current theory is that since the PCI subsystem ID is different when using the vendor BIOS than from using the Coreboot BIOS, it's possible that the subsystem ID somehow tells SeaBIOS/Linux that this specific SATA controller has a quirk that changes the initialization timings. [...]

- Summarizing

My current status is that PureOS boots and is perfectly usable, however the M.2 controller doesn't work reliably. Also, the MEI PCI device as well as the USB EHCI device have disappeared from the "lspci" output (both USB ports are working though). The lspci output is also different for most of the other devices when compared to the original BIOS.

[...]Here is [my] Acceptance Test Matrix [...] where I've stricken whatever I have had time to test and confirm as working, and made bold anything known not to work.

[...]At least 22 out of 32 items [...] are considered tested and done.

[...]I hope to have the M.2 issues fixed within the next couple of weeks, then, after making sure it is perfectly safe to flash Coreboot to any Librem 13, we'll probably release a beta image for people to test (it will come with plenty of disclaimers though!) After that, I'll work on disabling the Intel [Management Engine].

Previous:
Are Purism's Goals for the Librem Laptop Possible to Achieve? [soylentnews.org]
An Early Review of the Purism Librem 15 Laptop (Which Uses 100 Percent Free Software) [soylentnews.org]

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