Trisquel on POWER8
It seems like there will be a crowd funding campaign soon for Talos Secure Workstation from Raptor Engineering. It uses IBM POWER8 architecture. The interesting thing is that Trisquel is mentioned on the Supported Operating Systems list on the current crowd funding project page. Will Trisquel 8 run on POWER8?
https://www.crowdsupply.com/raptorcs/talos
Some additional links:
https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=talos-workstation
It's "planned for Trisquel 8", as the website says.
I do not believe supporting the POWER architecture is a priority in Trisquel's development (supporting ARM looks more useful for the general public), i.e., I guess (and only *guess)* that somebody behind the Talos Secure Workstation plans to do the work to make Trisquel 8 support the POWER architecture (that Ubuntu, Trisquel's base, supports). In this way, the workstation will really be "secure" (proprietary software cannot be rationally trusted). Also, thanks to that work, the workstation, with Trisquel pre-installed, will probably get the RYF certification: https://fsf.org/ryf
Having Trisquel 8 supporting the POWER architecture is good news of course. However, not many users will be able to afford a US$ 5,300 workstation (for the mainboard + "an entry-level 8-core 130W POWER8 CPU") nor have the use for the horse power it will provide: https://www.raptorengineering.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
"not many users will be able to afford a US$ 5,300 workstation"
Yeah, POWER is seriously expensive! They'll go up to 10 or 20 times that price.
