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LXicon
5571 days ago
The article does mention that Stallman uses a "rather slow" Lemote Yeeloong laptop because it's the only laptop with a free BIOS.
2 comments
jrockway
5571 days ago
I thought it was the CPU microcode, not the BIOS? Because there are open source BIOSes that you can flash to a variety of more powerful machines.
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LXicon
5571 days ago
you are probably correct. the article just mentioned the BIOS. i looked around and could not find specific mention of the microcode in the laptop's specs :
http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Freest#Lemote_Yee...
or on Stallman's page :
http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
or in this FSF paper page on free hardware:
http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/how_hardware_vendors_can_hel...
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jff
5571 days ago
Which is untrue. I just purchased a Genesi Smartbook, which uses u-Boot and wasn't designed in a fascist country with a penchant for electronic espionage.
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LXicon
5571 days ago
is u-Boot a System BIOS? it appears to be a Bootloader:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/u-boot/
Bootloaders are executed after the BIOS.
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