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kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: Sources List all Non-Free ?

@cynwolf: I don't see the big issue with using the mentioned 10 years old hardware. This last generation of hardware with removable ME / without PSP should be powerful enough for most people and use cases even today. Also, there are many very interesting options in the ARM world (where Devuan also ships proprietary firmware by default as part of the embedded images). Regarding tomorrow, I am convinced that RISC-V and POWER will be viable alternatives to move forward.

Regarding the firmware in other chips: Well these chips should have limited control and usually be controlled by the CPU (provided you have proper IOMMU isolation and limit DMA access). Thus, the last thing you want is proprietary firmware running as root in kernel space on the main CPU - not mentioning any chip that has control over the CPU (like the mentioned auxilliary chips such as BMC controllers or stuff like a management engine that runs on a chip inside the cpu package).

Back to topic: Eventually I will find some time around new year to look into the installer issue, but if anyone has the time to resolve it earlier I would appreciate it.

cynwulf

Member

Registered: 2017-10-09

Posts: 234  

Re: Sources List all Non-Free ?

As a "10 years old hardware" user, I can see the problem.  Performance is dire.  I would like to get hold of the last AMD core APU without the PSP, that will do for me.  Thus far I just haven't been able to get hold of all the bits to build a new box cheaply enough (2nd hand preferred).

The only real hope is in other architectures than x86, however ARM also tends to have the proprietary firmware problem in the implementation (e.g. Raspberry Pi) and you will still never get away from proprietary firmware in GPU's and other devices.

If you mean Raptor's "Talos II" POWER9 based systems?  I have to admit, they look good, however there is no powerpc64 arch port for my OS of choice (OpenBSD) and they are very expensive and targeted mainly at servers.  As I understand it, a desktop user wanting to run the X server, would be restricted to the vesa driver?

kuleszdl

Member

Registered: 2018-11-03

Posts: 107  

Re: Sources List all Non-Free ?

Well, the Raspberry Pi is a bad example, but sunxi (Allwinner) and rockchip are much better ones, and in the meantime the GPU support is also getting better. Apart from that, the KGPE-D16 is one of the currently best options if you want to go for a cheap, powerful but also power-hungry x86 machine.

And no, I meant Raptor's "blackbird" POWER system that was for sale in Black Friday. It's like the TALOS 2 (lite), but in micro-ATX format with just two RAM slots and just one CPU socket, but apart from that still a real POWER machine. It's really a small board and not only targeted at servers.