No-microcode ROMs available in next Libreboot release (new stable release soon!)
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Hi everyone!
I have on important announcement, regarding Libreboot, that I think many people on this forum will appreciate:
https://libreboot.org/news/microcode.html
Article is exactly as it says on the title of this thread. The next release of Libreboot will *exclude* microcode updates, on separate ROM images alongside ones that include them. This is in direct response to certain criticisms by people here and elsewhere. It's my hope that this will end any discomfort that some people have, as a result of the changes in Libreboot from November 2022 onwards.
Patch:
https://browse.libreboot.org/lbmk.git/commit/?id=f338697b96757977d2a14da00a91236595704fed
This shall be the default, in the new stable release coming soon.
Thoughts?
~Leah
"It’s natural that some people may wish to cause random kernel panics, raminit failures, thermal safety issues, random data corruption in memory, and other similar issues commonly caused by lack of microcode updates. Such folly should be discouraged, but the user’s freedom to choose should also be respected, and accomodated."
> "the user’s freedom to choose should also be respected, and accomodated."
>
> https://libreboot.org/news/microcode.html
That is equivalent to saying that providing nonfree software is giving
the freedom to be a slave.
--
Saluton.
Esteban Ordóñez
If you want to give Richard Stallman (the father of the free software
movement) a hand, visit https://stallmansupport.org
All information received in subsequent emails and the associated
attachments is considered public with rights to use, redistribute,
modify and distribute modified versions, regardless of any previous or
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information. Thank you.
They wrote that? That looks quite the unprofessional and immature.
What do the maintainers gain from antagonizing/insulting their users so?
Thank you for that Leah!
Loved what you said and I feel very lucky to have sent you my machines last week, which, by chance, proved to be the right time for the new Libreboot. This update sounds and smells wonderful, just like freedom in bloom!
Yes, it's me :)... my machines are with you and I am glad to wait, please take your time (yes please for new Libreboot)!
I'd also like to take the opportunity to recommend Minifree computers and services to anyone new to GNU/Linux, as I have recommended it to my other half (now a new GNU/Linux user) and friends... it's a double whammy, we gain for supporting the development + for our own peace of mind which comes with the confidence of a job well done!!
My pleasure Leah!
You sound very busy! I am happy to wait, as I said, you can even move me to the end of the queue if that helps :)
That's great to hear! I bought mine at just the right time then. It's good to hear
that so many are supporting what the libreboot team and Minifree are doing.
On Wed, Jun 21, 2023 at 06:36:06PM +0000, name at domain wrote:
> Thank you for that Leah!
>
> Loved what you said and I feel very lucky to have sent you my machines last
> week, which, by chance, proved to be the right time for the new Libreboot.
> This update sounds and smells wonderful, just like freedom in bloom!
>
> Yes, it's me :)... my machines are with you and I am glad to wait, please
> take your time (yes please for new Libreboot)!
>
> I'd also like to take the opportunity to recommend Minifree computers and
> services to anyone new to GNU/Linux, as I have recommended it to my other
> half (now a new GNU/Linux user) and friends... it's a double whammy, we gain
> for supporting the development + for our own peace of mind which comes with
> the confidence of a job well done!!
--
Travis Montoya
www.travgm.org
name at domain
What's the point of even bothering with librebooting the device if libreboot contains proprietary blobs? In my opinion proprietary blobs are unacceptable.
Indeed, this now very much looks like a fake libreboot. The actual libreboot project is to be found there: https://libreboot.at. No ifs, no blobs.
"In order to achieve our goal, it is crucial that we call a program “free” or “libre” only when it is indeed free in its entirety. When we talk about specific programs, we must not muddle the facts about what is free and what is not. If people start referring to a progran as “libre,” when parts of it are not in fact libre, that tends to lead the community astray."
I am a translator!
> now you all turn just like that and attack
You are misinterpreating disagreement as attack.
I have read https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html#more-detailed-insight-about-microcode at least 10 times since it was written and tried to find information about what it says:
- my experience with the 2016 Libreboot, without microcode updates and with mitigations, is pretty good and I am grateful to Leah for that, so I am puzzled to read now on libreboot.org that "Not including these updates will result in an unstable/undefined state".
- I have nowhere seen that the reason why the FSF considers non-free microcode not acceptable is because the FSF believes that the CPU can be made an entire different one, unlike what this page says. Even assuming that the non-free microcode is "hot fixes, nothing more", non-free "hot fixes" are making decisions in a way that allows no user control while libreboot.org has interesting links to people having done reverse engineering of certain microcode and showing that there is actually quite some freedom to do things there.
- It makes some sense to criticize the secondary processor exception made by the FSF for the RYF certification program but I don't see how that is related to microcode. The "argument" seems to be "the
FSF makes some exception so I can also make one". This is more a tit-for-tat reply than a meaningful argument.
> her Libreboot project has support for hardware that is arguably more free than the computers libreboot.at supports. The Samsung Chromebook Plus and ASUS Chromebook Flip C101 are both Librebootable and blobless. They don't require proprietary ec firmware like the Libreboot ThinkPads do and they also don't have proprietary CPU microcode like the Libreboot ThinkPads do; they have no microcode at all.
How does that justify using non-free microcode updates for Libreboot ThinkPads?
In summary:
- the only argument for using the non-free microcode update is "your computer is unusable otherwise".
- in my experience (and not only mine apparently), this is not the case.
Therefore, taking "binary blob reduction" seriously, I would rather not use the non-free microcode, unlike what libreboot.org says (and as prospero observed, libreboot.org is trying to scare users).
>"But FSF propaganda states ..."
So the FSF is the enemy now?
How interesting ...
I am a translator!
> FSF propaganda states that libreboot.org is a non-free project, despite the fact that it still does provide zero-blob configurations on pre-existing supported hardware
When libreboot.at was announced, libreboot.org had removed that option, thanks for restoring it, even though the documentation tries scaring users about it.
> The whole point of Libreboot, post-November-2022, is to bring coreboot to more people.
For many years, the whole point of libreboot.org was to have only free software on the main CPU. Now, I regularly see people happy when libreboot.org announces that it supports a new platform as they understand from the announcement that all necessary blobs were reverse engineered.
The current home page of libreboot.org boldly advertises "libre boot firmware" without mentioning that, on many platforms, it requires the use of non-free software. Is it surprising that people are confused?
I have spend hours reading that FAQ before and learned a lot about how poisonous binary blobs are (and I thank you for writing it but I don't thank you for removing pieces of it) but now, the "freedom status" page is describing the "needed ones" in a very neutral language and one needs to match them with the FAQ to realize what poisons one is going to swallow.
You are saying that this all will "further advance the cause of software freedom" but I fail to see how. To me, it looks like it is just convincing people that it is fine to use the binary blobs as long as it is with coreboot.
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