Libreboot: Open Letter to the Free Software Community
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Submission timeline
2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderThis is a nice statement to hear. I have had some IRC conversations with some of the involved people, and the whole affair was rather unpleasant. I hope things really are quieting down, and I'm really excited over the possibility of disabling ME. Being unable to get rid of hardware backdoors is essentially why I haven't bought a new laptop in ten years. Remarkably, my ten-year old Inspiron 1420 dellbuntu still works great, and it's delightful to be able to…
My problem with Libreboot is not only that supported hardware is very old [0], but that all those devices are vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre, so you cannot run any untrusted code (not even Javascript). [0] https://libreboot.org/docs/hardware/#supported-hardware. It seems that the Chromebook is an exception?
for a long time i thought the name of the project was libReboot. libreBoot does make more sense though.
Although sounds like a great idea, actually installing it can be a stressful experience (https://hackaday.com/2016/12/16/installing-libreboot/)
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 3
- Total points
- 659
- Total comments
- 337
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-10-08 | Libreboot – A free BIOS or UEFI replacementFirst breakout | zerognowl | 167 | 62 |
| 2017-04-03 | Open Letter to the Free Software Community | AdmiralAsshat | 9 | 0 |
| 2017-04-06 | Libreboot: Open Letter to the Free Software CommunityBest thread | jff | 272 | 207 |
| 2021-06-24 | Libreboot replaces proprietary BIOS firmware on some modern computers | chinmaykunkikar | 2 | 1 |
| 2021-09-10 | Libreboot: Freedom-Respecting Boot FirmwareHall induction · Latest 20+ point return | guerrilla | 209 | 67 |