New FSF-certified libreboot workstations available from Viking for under $1,000 Euros; 8-core AMD Opteron chips
This is fairly exciting. Viking had a more expensive workstation available with libreboot with a beefier Opteron chip, but this new "Viking D8" should be able to handle most workloads:
FSF announcement: https://www.fsf.org/news/vikings-d8-mainboard-and-d8-workstation-now-fsf-certified-to-respect-your-freedom
Viking store page: https://store.vikings.net/libre-friendly-hardware/d8ryf
Trisquel 8 is the primary OS Viking offers at this time.
I was able to spec one for $775 Euros plus $164 shipping to America for a total of $939. That includes the processor, an 8 core, 3000 MHz beast called the Opteron 4284 that was first introduced in November, 2011 (2 Opterons max); 8 GB of ram (32GB max); a GeForce GT 710 card; a small hdd, case, power supply, 2 year warranty. Not bad pricing. 16GB of ram and a decent sized SDD will add another $175 to the total. European customers will have to deal with the VAT tax.
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How well supported by nouveau is the Nvidia graphics unit?
The GT 710 is fully supported by nouveau as of 2016 according to this Phoronix benchmark article: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=gt-710-nouveau-tests
Looks like at that time, with overclocking, nouveau performance was close to the prorprietary driver in a lot of cases. Nouveau has advanced since 2016, so performance may be better today.
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I like it how under 'GNU/Linux Distribution' it is either 'no operating system preinstalled' or 'trisquel 8.0' :P
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Does the nouveau card require running its non-free VGA option ROM? I get that impression from this bug report:
I would think that Viking must have found a fix or a workaround for that bug, since the FSF certified both the motherboard and the complete workstation as RYF hardware. The workstation includes the GT 710 card by default.