GNU Linux-Libre 5.7 Released - Drops Intel iGPU Security Fix Over Arrays Of Numbers

[darkoverlordofdata]

Just stick your bitcoins under your mattress. They will be safe there.

[Vistaus]

Another random distro that you shouldn't be using.

Since when is linux-libre a distro? Last time I checked, it wast just a kernel.

[angrypie]

Couldn't they have just included the original shader/kernel code and had it compiled along with the rest of the source code?

There's a corporate doctrine called "Fuck it Ship it" that might have something to do with this.

[ssokolow]

I never understood the difference between firmware in ROM and firmware loaded by the kernel. They’ll run the first, but the second offers far better security.

I can't remember the URL, but one of the articles Stallman posted to either the FSF site or the GNU site (like The Right to Read but technical rather than narrative) explains it. Basically, if the firmware is stored in ROM and not updatable, it's considered equivalent to an ASIC for licensing ideology purposes.

On the other hand, updatable firmware is treated as a potential vector for attempts to circumvent software freedom advocacy by just moving bits out of the CPU and into some other part of the system when people complain about them without opening them up. (Sort of like how the Management Engine or PSP is involved in legal BluRay decoding so your CPU never sees the decrypted movie frames.

(Also, since it was timing out when I checked, here's that link on the Wayback machine.)

[SuperSandro2000]

Since when is linux-libre a distro? Last time I checked, it wast just a kernel.

If I could edit the post I would do it to make you look stupid but apparently that is not possible here.
I mean same could be said about a kernel.

[ids1024]

I kind of agree with linux-libre, it is basically a binary specified manually as hexadecimal in an int array. It's ugly.

Couldn't they have just included the original shader/kernel code and had it compiled along with the rest of the source code?

Sure, they definitely could have. But then, the shader compiler would become a build dependency for any generic x86 kernel. Which I'm guessing Linus wouldn't approve of, and I don't know I disagree.