You can run a free OS pretty effortless, but when wanting 100% free software, you have to dig deeper and replace the proprietary BIOS firmware.
this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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honestly.. why? i really get why open source software is great, but there's no benefit in replacing the bios, right?
Star Labs' take on the matter.
Furthermore, if one is sensitive regarding their cybersecurity, then one is likely to adhere to the zero trust security model and thus choose to simply not trust; which would include the closed source BIOS. coreboot, on the other hand, at least allows one to audit it themselves. As Linus Torvalds has been approached for implementing backdoors, it should surprise nobody that (some) of the vendors we buy our devices from have been as well and thus our BIOSes might not have been as safe as one would like to believe. Qubes OS, the most secure OS on desktop, shares the view that coreboot is preferred over closed source BIOSes due to reasons related to trust.
It seems silly to be distrustful of proprietary BIOS firmware without having the same skepticism of the actual hardware.
I wholeheartedly agree.
Though, this shouldn't stop one to pick their fights and savor the wins. The defeatist mentality is our biggest enemy, we will not be victorious in the end if we don't resist.
Let's hope an excellent implementation of RISC-V with eye for open-source, processing power, efficiency and affordability comes out so that we're not limited to the expensive (but otherwise excellent) Talos II by Raptor Computing Systems.
There can be. There are certainly Bios' that don't give options that motherboards are perfectly capable of changing. I had an old Phenom II that I managed to patch NVME support into the bios so I could boot off of a PCIe Riser.
Granted, I was patching UEFI stuff and none of it was open source -- but the idea is the same. Open source bios in theory, could unlock features.
@FQQD @p_q if you want that hardware to support something the manufacturer will not support, open source bios can be useful.