Coreboot Blog

Yes it's possible, but not with current CPU from Intel or AMD.

Researched this recently after stumbling upon Librem 15:
https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-15

Librem 15 sounded too good to be true, and reached the conclusion that it is. Chatted with coreboot devs on IRC and read this article:
http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-purism-why-librem-is-not-the-same-as-libre/

Gluglug is probably the best option right now:
http://shop.gluglug.org.uk

Here's an email (March 2015) from Gluglug responding to some of my questions:

Hi Duncan,

>
> 1) Libreboot X200 w/ 8Gb RAM and 120GB SSD is spec'd as CPU P8400
> or higher. Would it be possible to receive a X200 with T9600
> (2.8Ghz) at this price?

T9600 isn't available on X200. If you are in the EU, you can send your
own X200 for flashing if you like.

"Or higher" means that I can send one with any CPU. Most of my X200
laptops (and most of what you will find online) have the P8400.

> 2) The X200 page mentions inclusion of ProteanOS. Is this available
> now? If not, could you give me a rough estimate of when it will be
> available?
>

There is no ETA, but it will be available some time this year, as a
kernel and initramfs file which will go into the libreboot ROM images
and be bootable from the GRUB payload.

> 3) How does one update libreboot when it's already installed? Is
> this something that can be done from within the operating system,
> or does one need to open up the computer and flash via…

They didn't just make the claims during crowdfunding, they doubled down after release. They are charging a premium for a claim of fully open hardware that they can't back up. You can get the same hardware at the same quality level for hundreds less and install your own Free OS. No, you're still not going to get a fully open BIOS, but at least you're not paying hundreds more to be lied to about it. They made promises that Intel would allow them source access to ME and other low level BIOS components, when Intel obviously would never do such a thing for one small startup. The whole project stinks of bait-and-switch.

Your best bet for a Librem-quality machine that is actually designed to run Linux is a Google Chromebook Pixel. If you want a truly 100% open from the chips up laptop, right now your only option is Bunnie's Novena, but it's not for the faint of heart; it's a true hacker's machine and not a ripoff of a MacBook.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Purism-Librem-Still-Blobbed

https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-purism-why-librem-is-not-the-same-as-libre/

Wow, I wonder how they pulled that off. It's certainly a good start, but since it will be shipping with non-Free (though replaceable) BIOS binaries it would still fall short of the Respects Your Freedom hardware certification requirements. I did some digging since I have little knowledge of the Purism project. The Purism project offers an estimate of one year for replacing the non-Free blobs in the firmware. The Libreboot FAQ says that it could take years to replace the Intel FSP or Video BIOS, much less both. Given that a Coreboot developer has expressed doubts [0, 1] about the bold claims the Purism project has made in the past I'm inclined to take the word of the folks working on Libreboot. If by the time, if ever, a truly Libre product ships from Purism will it be any less dated than the X200 we have now?

[0] http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/08/09/the-truth-about-purism-behind-the-coreboot-scenes/

[1] http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-purism-why-librem-is-not-the-same-as-libre/

> It's just a shame that with Intel ME the Libreboot/Coreboot devs have given up on Intel machines. I'm very interested in the Purism Librem laptop but I have low hopes. Maybe the future will be ARM.

This isn't true. Libreboot is the fork that only works with completely free platforms, which the newer Intel chipsets make impossible. Coreboot is still very much committed to supporting new Intel chipsets, although the mainboard availability of course depends on what developers have time and interest for.

Google Chromebooks all ship with Coreboot, so they're fully supported and a great choice if you're trying to make the most free usable computer you can get. They can all run Linux, and some of them even Windows with a little more effort. They also have ARM-based ones, some of which are completely blob-free.

Also, if you're putting your hopes on Pursim this may be of interested to you: http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/08/09/the-truth-about-purism-behind-the-coreboot-scenes/

If you want some reading about boot flow, see e.g.

https://www.coreboot.org/images/2/23/Apollolake_SoC.pdf

https://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2019/07/17/gsoc-how-to-run-c-code-in-bootblock-stage-for-qemu-aarch64/

https://9esec.io/blog/open-source-cache-as-ram-with-intel-bootguard/

The TLDR is that you need to get DRAM running before you can use it (e.g. by poking at DRAM controller's registers until it knows how to talk to your stick of RAM reliably and at a comfortable speed). Until then, you're stuck with SRAM. On ARM SoCs and Intel Apollo Lake, you use addressable SRAM. On most other x86 systems you use cache as RAM. Cache is just SRAM though, and the only difference between ARM and typical x86's case is that the latter doesn't let you directly address it.

You can find examples of DDR DRAM configuration in u-boot sources, and presumably in coreboot too.

I'm pointing out that these laptops are no more free then any other laptop out there. It's just an average laptop shipping a Linux distro.

These guys won't be able to get the binary blobs from neither Intel nor Nvidia released, this have been pointed out many times before from several places.

They are even kind enough to mention it themself: https://puri.sm/posts/purism-software-freedom-deconstructed/

http://blogs.coreboot.org/blog/2015/02/23/the-truth-about-purism-why-librem-is-not-the-same-as-libre/

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/3anjgm/on_the_librem_laptop_purism_doesnt_believe_in