Bug left open because I wish to see this fixed. However, I will modify lbmk to make GRUB multi-tree like coreboot is, so that the one with xhci can be used on select machines.
Something in the xhci driver is causing a double free. Fix TBD.
One of the mitigations is that SeaBIOS is now the only primary payload, with GRUB now only as a secondary payload. This affects the hardening guide, because it relies on password protection in GRUB.
I modified the guide to tell the user how to ensure that SeaBIOS only loads GRUB, and how to disable the SeaBIOS menu so that nothing but GRUB runs.
14:48 <@leah> gonna go home tonight
14:48 <@leah> and work on libreboot
14:48 <@leah> that is a fact, not a threat
idk why i found it amusing but i did so posting it here. from #librespeech just now
only tonight, because i'm working on minifree orders all weekend. not only am i the founder / lead developer of libreboot (free/opensource BIOS), i sell it pre-installed via this company:
@leah (#librespeech is a channel i run on libera irc, alongside #libreboot - #librespeech is the off-topic channel for #libreboot, where i send all the trolls, and we generally just banter/shitpost)
I ship to the EU all the time. In particular, I use UPS for EU shipping, and they're efficient. Normally there's just a link on the tracking page where you can pay the customs charge which is equivalent to VAT plus a small handling fee of about 20 EUR.
So if 400 GBP for a machine, UPS charges you about 120 EUR.
Before Brexit, EU customers paid UK VAT 20%. Now they pay 0% UK VAT, and pay their own country's VAT. See:
@whvholst@nemobis Yeah so, basically, whatever the total price is during checkout: times it by 1.2 and that's the pre-Brexit price.
The post-Brexit tax is the pre-Brexit tax multiplied by1.05 (matching the dutch vat. I assume dutch, your name is dutch and you said 21% which is dutch vat) plus €20.
So, 400 GBP -> pre-brexit tax was 80 GBP.
Now it's 84 GBP, plus that handling fee, makes it about 100 GBP. Convert that into EUR (at today's rate, multiple of 1.17) and it makes 115 to 125 EUR.
@whvholst@nemobis The EU did something unprecedented in its history, in response to Brexit: it made trading easier, for low value items:
That handling fee would be a problem if what you're buying is £20.
Anything not exceeding 150 EUR has this rule: non-EU merchants can(must) sign up to the IOSS scheme; they charge your country's VAT rate during checkout, and file VAT in only 1 EU country. Before, you had to register in every EU country.
I deal in higher value so you pay VAT at the border.
@whvholst@nemobis one day maybe they'll have another lightbulb moment and make that the case for all goods, regardless of value. Then I'd just register for VAT in some eastern european country (where costs are lower) and charge dutch, german, spanish, french VAT, you name it, at checkout.
But yeah, the current rules do add like 2-3 days delay in customs. But the way things work is pretty efficient. I only use good couriers, they do it all for you. You just pay VAT and it arrives, no problem.
@Evv1L in my opinion, it's pointless to even bother with nvidia on t440p/w541. libreboot disables it, and does intel-only for graphics.
the nvidia binary driver is no longer maintained for that one, so you have ot use an old linux distro. there is a hack on AUR that makes it work on newer kernels but it's still proprietary software.
and with the nouveau driver, performance would be about the same as just using intel graphics anyway.
This is an Intel Broadwell series laptop that I started selling recently. It comes with Librebot preinstalled and your choice of Linux/BSD along with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD.
I initially sold with 1366x768 screen resolution but I now provide 1080p panels as an upgrade option.
I'm the lead developer of Libreboot. Minifree sales fund my work. Libreboot is free software replacing proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware.
The X230 and 820 products are similar in terms of size though the 820 is a broadwell machine (greater power efficiency), two generations newer than X230 which is ivybridge.
The 820 has an eDP connector internally, so it can easily support the 1080p panels, which I now provide as an upgrade. The 820 is newer.
@samueljohnson yeah, tbh that statement wasn't really needed, so has now been removed - i used it for comparison, while raising a point, but the point itself is clear enough without such examples. the substance of the article, and sheer depth of it, especially that section as a whole, pretty much carries the point forward, driving it home without the need for analogy. patch:
With this, one can read the article you linked just fine. No worry. I also recommend Ublock Origin adblocker, Privacy Badger and "I still don't care about cookies"
Today is 16 November 2023, the 1-year anniversary of OSBoot and Libreboot merging to become a single, unified project; this is what birthed the Libreboot Binary Blob Reduction Policy, leading to about 2-3x as many boards supported in Libreboot. Libreboot today far surpasses both erstwhile projects: https://libreboot.org/news/policy.html
To celebrate, I've finally updated the T440p pic on https://minifree.org/; it used to show osboot. This new photo is of a T440p with Libreboot on it.
The T440p, pictured above, is the one I actually use myself. That's why it has a bunch of stuff plugged into it. It's my main development machine!
I sell laptops on https://minifree.org/ with Libreboot installed which replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware, offering faster boot speeds and better security. I'm also the founder of Libreboot. Sales fund the project.
I sell these modified machines with your choice of Debian Linux, other Linux distro or a BSD of your choice, alongside Libreboot.
Today I learned that there are certain very special LInux distros/users who put /boot on a FAT32 file system.
Someone actually reported a bug in the recent 20231106 Libreboot release, because I removed FAT32 support in GRUB. Because our GRUB doesn't boot Windows/DOS directly anyway, and I didn't think some Linux users would boot Linux from a 1980s DOS file system. Really.
So the user could have been doing it before Libreboot; the last non-coreboot system I ever personally used was pre-UEFI.
Guess I'm oldschool. I've actually never personally used UEFI on x86. And in Libreboot, our default recommended payload, GRUB, just boots your Linux kernel on the bare metal.
Coreboot does init, jumps to GRUB (built for coreboot, not BIOS/UEFI) and directly boots Linux.
In other words, Libreboot's default setup is to not have any BIOS or UEFI callbacks. Coreboot just sets everything up and runs GRUB in flash, running on the bare metal; in this, GRUB is implementing all of its own drivers, does its own of everything, because again: no BIOS/UEFI callbacks or routines of any kind.
Then GRUB boots Linux in this setup. Directly. Coreboot provides a framebuffer for video, or text mode, and Linux video drivers set mode directly
In other words, I still live in the year 2005. Newer isn't always better, and in my opinion the UEFI spec is garbage. It defines interfaces that are completely redundant for the purpose of booting an operating system.
Coreboot's design is clean. here are better ways to boot linux:
grub in flash doing multiboot
linux in flash, kexec a linux kernel - the original intent of coreboot, when it was called linuxbios
u-boot spl (essentially similar to the coreboot payload concept but in u-boot land)