Coreboot & Triquel Computers
Wishing to support Free Software and Trisquel, please consider buying hardware that has a "free" BIOS, coreboot.
http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards
http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Chipsets_and_Devices
Linux computer vendors, like ZaReason and System76, will be more than willing to build a computer with coreboot and Trisquel.
Also, please document your coreboot machine here:
http://www.h-node.org/notebooks/catalogue/en/1/1/undef/undef/undef/undef/undef/yes/undef
And, of course, ThinkPenguin sells "free" computers.
It is difficult to understand the GNU Operating System's software development
model. All the development seems to have been done at no cost to the Free
Software Foundation and then the code was released under the GPL (and
copyright was assigned to FSF? http://live.gnome.org/CopyrightAssignment How
does it make it into the package list?
http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html#allgnupkgs
or the Gnome Foundation List? Who can decide to relicense/dual license a
package).
It seems that Coreboot is no exception, programmer charity to support an
ideal.
Hopefully, one of the Coreboot developers (past or future), or companies
sponsoring Coreboot, will reach out and offer their talents and services
gratis, in charity, pro bono, to develop mainboards that are desired by
ThinkPenguin, InaTux, and Los Alamos Computers.
This shouldn't cost any money or require resources from the vendors
distributing computers with Trisquel pre-installed.
Maybe one of the team at Google Summer of Code could work on this.
http://www.gnu.org/links/companies.html
http://www.coreboot.org/Sponsors
http://www.coreboot.org/Contributors
http://www.coreboot.org/Products
Some confirmation from Chris would be nice if he only supports coreboot systems.
I am a translator!
The problem is the following: there is only one company that makes videocards that run with fully free drivers. It is ironically Intel. For example the x3000 and x4500 have free drivers and do not require binary blobs in the kernel.
However, the motherboards that use those videocards run on chipsets that have no support by coreboot. I asked on the coreboot mailing list and that's more or less what one of the devs answered me: "coreboot does not run with this type of chipset. It would require a lot of difficult backwards engineering to make coreboot run on these motherboards. It will not happen in the foreseeable future."
So at the moment you cannot run a fully free system, that has 3D acceleration. You either have 3D acceleration plus a non-free bios, or a free bios with no 3D acceleration (a system with an AMD CPU and a Radeon/GeForce card running in a kind of limited mode with free software drivers).
I am a member!
Every body is making compromises and we are trying mitigate those compromises. Nobody sells a coreboot compatible laptop for instance. We are doing everything else that is currently possible. No one else is shipping systems which are really free software friendly. Even the new YeeLoong requires a non-free driver or firmware (forget which) for the 3d acceleration.
The reason we don't ship coreboot is for the reason Cyberhawk mentions. It is a non-trivial task to port coreboot from one board to another. If we were to finance it (this is not happening in the near future- although is something we would like to eventually do) the board most likely to get a port would be an Intel Atom desktop board or a low end i3/i5.
Lets back up a moment though. Why are we not shipping a desktop system right now with coreboot when there are all these boards available. Cost and availability. A board actually has to be supported before it is discontinued. These discontinued boards are significantly more expensive and most people aren't willing to pay 3x as much for a system.
Go through that list and point me to a motherboard under $100 that isn't discontinued and supports 16GB of ram. It also can't have an NVidia or ATI chipset.
You aren't going to find such a motherboard.
Chris and Cyberhawk thank you for the comments.
Disheartening.
There are over 50 motherboards in that list. They have done quite a lot of work, which doesn't seem to benefit Trisquel or the vendors that sell Trisquel Computers.
"The coreboot project was started in the winter of 1999 in the Advanced Computing Laboratory at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) by Ron Minnich."
One assumes that something so important to the Free Software Foundation there would be direct efforts by FSF to get important hardware BOISes released under the GPL, or structure financing to have a dedicated team earning their livelihood on this project. To ask a single Linux computer system vendor to finance this on their own doesn't make sense. Not even to work on motherboards that dedicated GNU/Linux computer system vendors such a ThinkPenguin, InaTux, and Los Alamos Computers are currently selling or are planning on selling...the way the coreboot project is structured I can't imagine the question was even asked.
http://www.coreboot.org/FAQ
http://www.coreboot.org/Contributors
http://www.coreboot.org/Sponsors
I am a member!
We are trying to solve these issues. Right now we are working on USB wireless N chipset as we feel this is a critical issue. The BIOS is not the only non-free code running and requires more resources than the community could possibly finance at this time.
Really- there isn't any way it is going to happen. We have in the works agreements which we hope will significantly increase our revenue. Money is key to getting things done. I think there will come a point where it'll happen. It is going to require adoption by the masses though. Right now even if every GNU/Linux user whom is purchasing a laptop with GNU/Linux pre-loaded purchased a computer from us we probably still couldn't finance a coreboot port. This is the size of this particular issue.
This is not to say there isn't any other way to finance a coreboot port. It has been done before. I'm not sure who got these laptops or if it was done after the fact (there may not have been any actual users or availability with coreboot installed).
I know of one which was financed by a government in Europe (if I recall). Again- this system was not free software friendly. It used an ATI graphics chipset and still had other non-free microcode. This is off the top of my head. Please correct if I have made any factual errors or if you have additional info. The coreboot web site does have a number of laptops which coreboot was ported. Each is not completely free or remotely free software friendly.
I am a member!
We are trying to solve these issues. Right now we are working on USB wireless
N chipset as we feel this is a critical issue. The BIOS is not the only
non-free code running and requires more resources than the community could
possibly finance at this time.
Really- there isn't any way it is going to happen. We have in the works
agreements which we hope will significantly increase our revenue. Money is
key to getting things done. I think there will come a point where it'll
happen. It is going to require adoption by the masses though. Right now even
if every consumer purchased a computer from us and no one else we probably
still couldn't finance a coreboot port.
This is not to say there isn't any other way to finance a coreboot port. It
has been done before. I'm not sure who got these laptops or if it was done
after the fact (there may not have been any actual users or availability with
coreboot installed).
I know of one which was financed by a government in Europe (if I recall).
Again- this system was not free software friendly. It used an ATI graphics
chipset and still had other non-free microcode. This is off the top of my
head. Please correct if I have made any factual errors or if you have
additional info. The coreboot web site does have a number of laptops which
coreboot was ported. Each is not completely free or remotely free software
friendly.
It is difficult to understand the GNU Operating System's software development model. All the development seems to have been done at no cost to the Free Software Foundation and then the code was released under the GPL (and copyright was assigned to FSF? http://live.gnome.org/CopyrightAssignment How does it make it into the package list? http://www.gnu.org/software/software.html#allgnupkgs
or the Gnome Foundation List? Who can decide to relicense/dual license a package).
It seems that Coreboot is no exception, programmer charity to support an ideal.
Hopefully, one of the Coreboot developers (past or future), or companies sponsoring Coreboot, will reach out and offer their talents and services gratis, in charity, pro bono, to develop mainboards that are desired by ThinkPenguin, InaTux, and Los Alamos Computers.
This shouldn't cost any money or require resources from the vendors distributing computers with Trisquel pre-installed.
Maybe one of the team at Google Summer of Code could work on this.
http://www.gnu.org/links/companies.html
http://www.coreboot.org/Sponsors
http://www.coreboot.org/Contributors
http://www.coreboot.org/Products
I am a member!
Contrary to popular belief most of the free code written is done by companies like Redhat, IBM, and others. At least they are paying the developers to write said code.
There are other industries which have no interest in non-free code. They contribute to projects like Coreboot. Coreboot is used on servers for instance. There are things you can do with Coreboot that you can't do otherwise. Or not in a cheap and effective manor. So while there are developers being paid they are not being paid to work on porting Coreboot to the hardware we need it on. They are being paid to port it to new server boards and similar.
There have been ATOM boards with Coreboot. At least one exists. Unfortunately it isn't manufactured and there is nobody with the resources interested in funding another port.
Don't make the mistake of believing there are no volunteers. There are. They are frequently being paid to do something during the day and are contributing at night to other projects.
I would bet money that most of the volunteers are focused on desktop oriented projects. The reason is there aren't a whole lot of successful business models focused on desktop GNU/Linux. Even the few which exist are largely profitable due to large companies funding them. For instance Disney funding WINE in order to use Adobe Photoshop on GNU/Linux (I have no idea what portion of Codeweavers revenue is generated from users and how much from companies like Disney- this is just an example).
I am a member!
Contrary to popular belief most of the free code written is done by companies
like Redhat, IBM, and others. At least they are paying the developers to
write said code.
There are other industries which have no interest in non-free code. They
contribute to projects like Coreboot. Coreboot is used on servers for
instance. There are things you can do with Coreboot that you can't do
otherwise. Or not in a cheap and effective manor. So while there are
developers being paid they are not being paid to work on porting Coreboot to
the hardware we need it on. They are being paid to port it to new server
boards and similar.
There have been ATOM boards with Coreboot. At least one exists. Unfortunately
it isn't manufactured and there is nobody with the resources interested in
funding another port.