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AMD Provides Fusion Support For Coreboot
An anonymous reader writes "AMD has done a big code drop providing Fusion support for Coreboot, the project that once was called LinuxBIOS for providing an open source BIOS implementation."
A lack of vendor support has long made the task of the coreboot developers difficult. Support for what is slated to be a common chipset is pretty encouraging, and will hopefully make it easier to run an entirely Free Software system for diehards like RMS.
What's this? A Phoronix article where I _don't_ have to click through eleven other articles to find the source?
Other than that: Hopefully this will make coreboot's future brighter, by a lot.
I've got a Jetway mini-ITX, and its BIOS/ACPI is so FUBAR that they managed to break *all* power management stuff along with access to the temperature sensor and fan speed controls. Y'know, the main reasons for buying a low-speed mini-ITX in the first place.
And unlike all other mobo manufacturers I've used (Asus is good, and so is Gigabyte), this one seems to never, ever put out updates to fix their broken firmware, let alone add features to it.
That's very nice. Of course, there's more to motherboard support than the chipset and CPU, but they are two major hurdles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
And you just hit the nail on the head of why this will NEVER take off...planned obsolescence. The OEMs want you to have to blow cash for a new laptop every couple of years, and having a tweak-able BIOS doesn't help in that regard. The same goes for the ass raping most of these companies charge for replacement parts for laptops. Often it is cheaper to shitcan the laptop and get another one and that is precisely the point in a nutshell.
Sadly I doubt we'll ever see a truly open laptop BIOS because it is in the short term interest of the companies to make laptops into disposable devices, damn the waste and effect on the environment. This is just another example of why "damn everything but the quarterly earnings report!" hurts us all in the long run. It is a waste of material, a waste of resources, a poisoning of the environment, all to make a product that could easily last 10 years with a little thought into a 2 year or less disposable item. Just sad.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.