Ariadne Conill: the FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users

The normal Linux kernel is not recommended by the FSF, because it allows for the use of proprietary firmware with devices. Instead, they recommend Linux-libre, which disables support for proprietary firmware by ripping out code which allows for the firmware to be loaded on to devices. Libreboot, being FSF-recommended, also has this policy of disallowing firmware blobs in the source tree, despite it being a source of nothing but problems.
The end result is that users who deploy the FSF-recommended firmware and kernel wind up with varying degrees of broken configurations. Worse yet, the Linux-libre project removes warning messages which suggest a user may want to update their processor microcode to avoid Meltdown and Spectre security vulnerabilities.
While it is true that processor microcode is a proprietary blob, from a security and reliability point of view, there are two types of CPU: you can have a broken CPU, or a less broken CPU, and microcode updates are intended to give you a less broken CPU. This is particularly important because microcode updates fix real problems in the CPU, and Libreboot has patches which hack around problems caused by deficient microcode burned into the CPU at manufacturing time, since it’s not allowed to update the microcode at early boot time.
-
- Login or register to post comments
Printer-friendly version
- 1754 reads
PDF version
More in Tux Machines
- Highlights
- Front Page
- Latest Headlines
- Archive
- Recent comments
- All-Time Popular Stories
- Hot Topics
- New Members
Linux 5.18-rc7
From Linus Torvalds Date Sun, 15 May 2022 18:15:42 -0700 Subject Linux 5.18-rc7 share 0 So things continue to be fairly calm, and as such this is likely the last rc before 5.18 unless something bad happens next week. All the stats here look normal, with the bulk of it being random driver updates (network drivers, gpu, usb, etc). There's a few filesystem fixes, some core networking, and some code kernel stuff. And some selftest updates. Sortlog appended, nothing really stands out (the most exciting thing last week was literally that Andrew has started using git, which will make my life easier, but that doesn't affect the *code*) Please give it one last week of testing, so that we'll have a nice solid 5.18 release. Linus ![]() | today's howtos
|
today's leftovers
| OpenVMS 9.2 hits production status for x86-64VMS Software Inc. has announced the release of OpenVMS 9.2, the first production-supported release for commercial off-the-shelf x86 hardware.
The expectation is that customers will deploy the new OS [PDF] into VMs. Most recent hypervisors are supported, including VMware (Workstation 15+, Fusion 11+ and ESXi 6.7+), KVM (tested on CentOS 7.9, openSUSE Leap 15.3, and Ubuntu 18.04), and Oracle VirtualBox 6.1.
|
Conill: the FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful...
Conill: the FSF’s relationship with firmware is harmful to free software users