Re: [lp-ca-on] Respects Your Freedom hardware, has anyone bought some?

[Sergio Durigan Junior]

On Thursday, January 07 2016, Blaise Alleyne wrote:

> On 07/01/16 05:18 PM, Matt Lee wrote:
>> [...] I'm also considering using an X200 and moving to a desktop for my 
>> daily driver
>> so I can have a free BIOS but the performance of a modern computer. [...]
>> 
>
> That touches on two questions that I've been wondering over the past few 
> weeks:
>
> 1. Is the situation any different for desktops? (Is it easier to get libreboot
> running on a desktop?)

I think the situation is a a bit more complicated for desktops.  As far
as I have seen, libreboot only supports a few motherboards out there.
Let me check...

Yeah, that's still the case:
<http://libreboot.org/docs/hcl/index.html#supported_desktops_x86amdintel>.
So you have basically one motherboard from Gigabyte (desktop), and two
from ASUS (servers).  The Gigabyte one has been ported pretty recently,
so I'm not sure how risky it would be to flash it.

As for being easier or not, I don't know.  I'd guess that the amount of
work is kind of similar, but I can't confirm.

> 2. How much of a noticeable difference does a modern i3/i5/i7 CPU make 
> compared
> to the X200's Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26GHz processor? (Or, for what kinds of usage
> would you actually notice the difference?)

Heh, I've had a Core 2 Duo notebook (T400 or something?) from 2010 to
mid-2014.  I still remember how I felt when I switched to an i7...  Not
that my Emacs became faster (although it *starts* faster), but now I
manage to compile GDB *much* faster, and that made a difference to my
workflow (just because I compile stuff many times a day).  Things start
faster, and some of them run faster as well, but that's also because my
RAM has improved too.

However, this machine has several of the problems we were discussing
(BIOS, AMT).  It doesn't require private blobs, but that's a detail.

> Other specs from Minifree machines are pretty modern, e.g. up to 240 GB SSD 
> (or
> 1 TB HDD), up to 8 GB of RAM...
>
> My main hesitation over buying a Libreboot X200 is spending ~$1000 CAD to 
> still
> have an ancient CPU. (And also because I've already put an SSD in my X60, 
> could
> do the Libreboot installation service on it, etc.)
>
> What kind of computing would the more modern processors make a big difference 
> for?

I know you do a lot of your music stuff on your computer, so I guess
you'd feel a big difference if you moved to something more modern.  If
you also need to compile stuff regularly, you'd also notice an
improvement.

I totally understand your concern: the price is very expensive.  Maybe
the best option would be to flash libreboot yourself on the machine.
Actually, we could do the flashing together...  I would totally want to
participate/help in this.  I just don't have the machine (yet)...

Cheers,

-- 
Sergio
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