[coreboot] barbarians at the gates

[Peter Schmidt]

Hi,

seems like more and more dongle-functionality is going into UEFI:

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Windows-8-to-include-secure-boot-using-UEFI-2-3-1-1335246.html
http://vr-zone.com/articles/the-upgrade-path-to-ivy-bridge-might-be-blocked-by-changes-to-uefi/13513.html

Since their "Next-Gen" "Trusted Computing" "Deep Shit" was an utter failure, one could expect, that sooner or later they would be at the gates again with this, "functionality".


Besides spreading the word around, that there IS an alternative to UEFI, what else can I as a customer do, to ensure there will always be at least a few mainboards which run fully stable (and maybe even out-of-the-box) with coreboot (+SeaBIOS/GRUB) ?

1. Preferring hardware with such support? Sure.
This filter here  http://gh.de/?cat=mbson&sort=p  allows me to filter for all sorts of stuff, but not, for coreboot support. That is just sad.
Only by accident do I know, that this http://gh.de/610927 IS already supported by coreboot.

I stumbled upon the information in the http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards but really only accidentally, because I did not search, because I did not expect that new (= currently purchasable) boards are supported by coreboot! That is why me thinks, spreading the word, is not such a bad idea, and quite necessary. How to do that, without sounding like a zealot? The decision for coreboot, is not so much about today, is also about the products available in 5 or 10 years from now on!


2. Actually buying that hardware. Definitely!
Probably for Christmas I am going to set up a HTPC, I'll use a mainboard with coreboot support.


**But** how do I make it crystal clear to the seller/manufacturer that the coreboot-support is the reason that make me buy this particular product and not all the marketing bla bla?

Any ideas?

I do not want to write some lame e-mail claiming or demanding something. The moment I give him my money in exchange for the product, I really would like him to understand, that is is the coreboot support I am after. All mainboards have PCIe and DRAM banks, but the one I am buying, has coreboot support.