Libreboot 20230423 released! With new blob-free GM45 mainboard, Dell Latitude E6400
- Login o registrati per inviare commenti
Hi everyone!
Libreboot made *another* new release today, and the announcement is here:
https://libreboot.org/news/libreboot20230423.html
Of particular interest to this forum is the Dell Latitude E6400 port, which I wrote about elsewhere on this forum recently. The new release has ROMs for it, and it is a GM45 platform similar to X200/T400, and can boot blob-free;
the difference between it and GM45 thinkpads, is that the Dell E6400 can be flashed *entirely* in software, without disassembly. No skill required, any normal person can do it by just running some commands that are documented on the website.
In other words: no special flashing equipment required. Just boot your favourite libre distro, run e6400-flash-unlock util provided by Libreboot, then run flashrom. See:
https://libreboot.org/docs/install/e6400.html
It's also relatively cheap, easily available (more so than X200/T400 etc), while being easy to flash.
Similar construction quality to ThinkPads. Nice keyboard and screen, and has a trackpoint nub.
X200/T400 is still great, but the E6400 will be much nicer and make libre firmware accessible to more people, due to easy flashing.
Enjoy!
~Leah
(also, E6400 isn't the only port recently added, but the existence of it is what I chose to emphasize here; for example it easily complies with RYF when you remove microcode updates, something that some people on this forum prefer)
oh, forgot to mention:
https://libreboot.org/news/gm45microcode.html
the change documented there is present in this release
this release from today re-adds the mitigations against bugs caused by microcode update removal, on gm45 machines (thinkpad x200, t400, dell e6400 etc)
with this patch, rebooting and SpeedStep CPU frequency throttling work correctly again. See patch(included in this release today):
the mitigation is 2 patches:
* disable PECI to fix speedstep
* revert to old SMRR handling to fix reboot
hope this helps!
this is actually a criticism some people had, so i re-add those mitigations to make lb configurable in practise, allowing people to run without microcode updates with reasonable level of functionality like before
instructions on on that page (gm45microcode.html) for how to add or remove microcode updates from a rom, using cbfstool - no need to recompile, coreboot has a filesystem inside the ROM image, and you add/remove all sorts of files there using cbfstool
Is the maximum RAM configuration for E6400 also 8GB as with Lenovo ThinkPads? Are the other RAM considerations (PC3-8500, 2Rx8) similar?
yes, 8GB, but it's DDR2
2x4GB
when libreboot originally got gm45 machines, coreboot only supported ddr3 raminit on that platform
nicholas chin did the e6400 port, adding support for ddr2
it's quite a nice machine. similar build quality to a thinkpad.
> yes, 8GB, but it's DDR2
>
> 2x4GB
Oh, thanks.
> nicholas chin did the e6400 port, adding support for ddr2
Thanks to Nick as well, then :)
- Login o registrati per inviare commenti