• @[email protected]
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    10 months ago

    If you want to install this please DO NOT USE THE CH341A programmer. That fucking shit has the internal control signals and data signals at 5V and the bios chips usually work at 3.3V or lower.

    The CH341A is defective by design and the Chinese manufacturers don’t care. There are fixes online, but still the chip works badly.

    If you want to install libreboot, please use any other option given at Libreboot docs. I lost too many hours because of the fucking Chinese ch341a. Which I solved quickly with a pi pico board.

    In any case do not use this guy’s video as an example. The instructions of the video ARE WRONG and you may fry your bios. Don’t be fooled by this youtuber confidence. Follow the docs.

    I’ve installed it on a x220.

    • @TimeNaan
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      410 months ago

      You can get a 3.3V adapter for the CH341A.

        • @TimeNaan
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          110 months ago

          I agree about the accessories, they’re crap but cheap to replace with better ones. And then the programmer works very well.

    • @[email protected]B
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      110 months ago

      Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

      video

      Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

      I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

  • @[email protected]
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    2510 months ago

    I imagine open source boot software being better than closed source (a real no brainer) but whats the difficulties with the open one? I’m not very versed in those very low level things.

    • @[email protected]
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      2710 months ago

      All those blobs in there need to be reverse engineered. As there are not that many people doing it, this hardware is often a decade old

      • @[email protected]
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        1910 months ago

        Not entirely the case anymore. Libreboot switched to a blob reduction policy in order to support more hardware. Hopefully this will bring things forward quite a bit over the next year.

        • @MigratingtoLemmy
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          210 months ago

          Unless they support the newer platforms, it will remain a niche product. I’ve come to accept a compromise between binary blobs and FOSS bootloader, and the path that Libreboot has chosen is great for the community, so we’ll wait and watch

  • Possibly linux
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    10 months ago

    I use a System76 laptop and I wish they took a stronger stance on freedom.

        • youmaynotknow
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          710 months ago

          I’m confused. What part of their software is not FOSS? They use CoreBoot for Bios, PopOS is based on Ubuntu and Cosmic is open source too. Do you mean that they still use Nvidia cards in some of their devices?

          • Possibly linux
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            510 months ago

            The CPUs require non-free software to boot and function. That’s very hard to get around but it would be interesting if at some point they built a device based on ARM with a chip set that is free.

            On top of that they use Intel WiFi which needs non-free software to work. Ubuntu, pop os and Fedora all ship proprietary software in the kernel to make it work. Admittedly the number of free WiFi cards are limited so maybe it was about tradeoffs.