Don't Get Excited Over Coreboot Laptops Yet

[del_diablo]

Crap... I was hoping to get a new AMD Trinity with coreboot this year.

So I guess it's not happenning and we'll have to use UEFI that is bigger than the kernel itself. Awesome.

I am more or less in the same boat, if we are talking about desire for it.
Todays A8 APUs are almost at that special performance sweetspot, and Trinity will likely be at exactly that sweetspot or a bit better. Besides, most of the boards and laptops that will be shipped will be crippled by the lack of a good BIOS.

[curaga]

Yes, uni is still school and someone studying there is still a student

[ChrisXY]

So a technical solution (big laptop) for a political problem (insufficient school IT funds)?

University (is it still "student" in english?). We got it because everybody was fine with it (we could have gotten PCs if we really wanted (I hope)). I just feel much more comfortable working on my own environment on my own PC.

[curaga]

When we got a room for a project, guess, what we got for working there? Monitors, keyboards and mice.

So a technical solution (big laptop) for a political problem (insufficient school IT funds)?

[ChrisXY]

Cause those 17-18" slabs aren't laptops so much as they are desktop computers with

Yes.

their own built in uninterpretable power supply, screen etc. They are heavy, hot, awkward and eat power like an SUV drinks gas.

Still less than a comparable desktop.

Most people go the other route of bigass desktop and a netbook or subnotebook for mobile usage. Personally I'd love a 10.1" @ 1280x800

I am not most people.
I want to work (or play ) wherever I am. I am not sure but I don't think I do even the majority of my work (student) at home. When we got a room for a project, guess, what we got for working there? Monitors, keyboards and mice.

Thoguh it would be nice if in the future if the OSS drivers can get multi GPU and OpenCL sorted out it would be fun to have the equivalent of the A10 w/ the HD6990m(not like the desktop version, it's only 1 core, not 2) in a 15.4", you know, shut down the HD6990m when it's not needed, but be able to use both for compute, use the IGP for light 3D(think QuakeLive or OpenArena) and the HD6990m for heavy 3d and let the IGP handle Havok engine style OpenCL physics since the performance difference between the current HD6620G(A8 IGP) and HD6990m is so much that there would likely be no benefit from Crossfire, possibly even be slower in that setup...

What would also be nice and maybe in the nearer future would be using Xen and a linux as dom0 and a windows as domU. With a CPU and mainboard with VT-d you could give the dedicated graphics card to the windows VM and have the integrated GPU for the linux dom0. It just needs a bit magic for actually being able to display both somehow.

[Kivada]

Well, I'm looking for one of the more powerful notebooks in the not so far future: HD 6950 or better, 16 gb ram, 2 hard disks, 17 inch, i7 2... etc.
I don't quite understand the resistance against that kind of notebook in a reasonable price span... Looks like a Samsung NP-700G7A or Schenker XMG P701 to me.

Cause those 17-18" slabs aren't laptops so much as they are desktop computers with their own built in uninterpretable power supply, screen etc. They are heavy, hot, awkward and eat power like an SUV drinks gas.

Most people go the other route of bigass desktop and a netbook or subnotebook for mobile usage. Personally I'd love a 10.1" @ 1280x800 running an AMD E-450 as that would cover 90% of my needs for a mobile device, if I needed something with more punch I'd love something based on the current AMD A8 or the upcoming A10 APU with no bigger then a 15.4", though I'd take that at 1920x1200.

Thoguh it would be nice if in the future if the OSS drivers can get multi GPU and OpenCL sorted out it would be fun to have the equivalent of the A10 w/ the HD6990m(not like the desktop version, it's only 1 core, not 2) in a 15.4", you know, shut down the HD6990m when it's not needed, but be able to use both for compute, use the IGP for light 3D(think QuakeLive or OpenArena) and the HD6990m for heavy 3d and let the IGP handle Havok engine style OpenCL physics since the performance difference between the current HD6620G(A8 IGP) and HD6990m is so much that there would likely be no benefit from Crossfire, possibly even be slower in that setup...

[Kivada]

Crap... I was hoping to get a new AMD Trinity with coreboot this year.

So I guess it's not happenning and we'll have to use UEFI that is bigger than the kernel itself. Awesome.

Hit up System76 and Zareason, maybe if we all keep badgering them they'll get something able to load Coreboot with an AMD A10 Trinity APU. Why them? Cause they're the only shops I know of that sell only Linux x86 laptops.

[droidhacker]

If you don't give the name of the vendor, then OF COURSE we haven't heard of it. DUH!!!

Now what is GOING to happen is the same thing that ALWAYS happens with coreboot, but with minor variation.
"We're going to do it, we're going to do it", but it won't be done in time for the hardware to ship. The hardware will then ship with proprietary bios with promise of upgrading later on to coreboot. Coreboot for that hardware won't be finished before the hardware is deemed obsolete, so attention will drop for getting it working. The hardware will eventually have a pre-alpha dev version that will be almost totally non-functional and nobody will ever be interested in working on that hardware again.

[ChrisXY]

Well, I'm looking for one of the more powerful notebooks in the not so far future: HD 6950 or better, 16 gb ram, 2 hard disks, 17 inch, i7 2... etc.
I don't quite understand the resistance against that kind of notebook in a reasonable price span... Looks like a Samsung NP-700G7A or Schenker XMG P701 to me.

And interesting features like coreboot? No chance at all it seems. Instead I'll still be stuck with a crappy BIOS. And by crappy I mean, lacking any reasonable configurability or downright buggy.

[Ex-Cyber]

I'm sure if you posted this on the coreboot mailing list, someone would step up

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_Socket_FM1/F1A75V/ (F1A75-V)

would be my personal suggestion. Doesn't have weird extra chips to offer extra options, cheap and does feature the graphic card connectors on the motherboard. Hard to find though (couldn't find it on newegg).

The "F1A75-V PRO" seems to be much more common. I'm biased in that regard since I own one, but considering that I bought it at a local independent store I think it's a fair conclusion that it's widely distributed. I'm not sure any of the extra chips (extra USB3 controller, extra SATA controller, any others?) would actively cause problems. The "Asus TPU" sounds like the sort of OEM secret sauce that might screw things up, but it can apparently be turned off manually via a switch (unless this is just some GPIO pin that the BIOS reads and then tells the chip to turn itself off, which probably isn't out of the question).