[coreboot] Are any Chromebooks able to run fully libre?

Sam Kuper sam.kuper at uclmail.net
Thu Jan 2 21:31:17 CET 2014


On 02/01/2014, Patrick Georgi <patrick at georgi-clan.de> wrote:
> Am 02.01.2014 19:15, schrieb Sam Kuper:
>> As I understand it, there are two distinct reasons why some BLOBs, in
>> certain systems, cannot be eliminated/replaced by executing
>> appropriate software on those systems:
>
> Option 3:
> The image is signed with some vendor key. You could replace it, but the
> hardware prevents running any unsigned alternative.

I see that coming within case 2. The Intel CPU microcode I gave as an
example has this problem, IIUC. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I see it as
being like the Content Scramble System (CSS), AACS, etc, and we're
waiting for someone to create the equivalent of DeCSS, etc, so that
libre (or at least open source) alternative microcode can be made to
exist that would actually work on the CPU.

In the case of CSS and AACS, software DVD/Blu-Ray/etc players were
targeted rather than hardware ones. Unfortunately, with Intel
microcode, we only have a hardware "player' of microcode: the Intel
CPU, so it is more difficult for the community to solve the problem.

Regards,

Sam



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