Intel Skylake & Broxton Graphics Processors To Start Mandating Binary Blobs

An anonymous reader writes: Intel has often been portrayed as the golden child within the Linux community and by those desiring a fully-free system without tainting their kernel with binary blobs while wanting a fully-supported open-source driver. The Intel Linux graphics driver over the years hasn't required any firmware blobs for acceleration, compared to AMD's open-source driver having many binary-only microcode files and Nouveau also needing blobs — including firmware files that NVIDIA still hasn't released for their latest GPUs. However, beginning with Intel Skylake and Broxton CPUs, their open-source driver will now too require closed-source firmware. The required "GuC" and "DMC" firmware files are for handling the new hardware's display microcontroller and workload scheduling engine. These firmware files are explicitly closed-source licensed and forbid any reverse-engineering. What choices are left for those wanting a fully-free, de-blobbed system while having a usable desktop?

Comments

Re:rootkit?

[BlueStrat]

Q: What guarantee do we have that these binary blobs don't contain root kits?
A: None.

This really isn't acceptable. :(

Aw, c'mon! It's not like the NSA would risk vital US infrastructure, foreign trade, and financial/military/corporate/individual security by deliberately compromising the security of widely used operating systems, software, and/or encryption!

That's just crazy talk.

Strat

#TRANSLATIONFAIL# Re:mod 30wn

[davidwr]

You have exceeded the limits of my universal translator, and that's even after I installed the Yodaspeak and Tamarian-metaphor-interpretation modules (side-note: the latter is huge, it has to incorporate the entirety of the Tamarian race).

Then translator did make this out though:

"Mod parent post down"

"#UNCLEARCONTEXT# Operating System"

"#UNCLEARMEANING# Possible reference to poster making many recent repeated arguments related to either the current topic of discussion, BSDI, or both, and a possible relationship between the current topic of discussion and BSDI"

"#SPECULATIONCONTINGENTONPREVIOUSUNCLEARTRANSLATION# Possible insult related to the possible many recent repeated arguments mentioned above"

If you will kindly let me know what additional modules I need to install in my universal translator, I will be able to understand you better. Thank you.