Matthew Garrett18 years of the Linux fork that refuses to load the microcode that mitigates a range of CPU vulnerabilities
Never going to stop being angry about the subset of the free software community that would rather pretend that non-free software embedded in hardware doesn't exist than allow that non-free software to be replaced with equivalently non-free software that fixes bugs
The Penguin of Evil@mjg59 A lot of hardware has to embed non free firmware because incorrect firmware could cause physical damage to the device, and also because there's not really much other firmware it can run.
Most of the embedded firmware hidden out of sight and often not even upgradeable is tiny tiny embedded sequencing and the like or a deeply embedded 8051 running a 40 byte program because it was simpler to paste that in that write custom logic for it
@etchedpixels I've patched the firmware for my laptop's embedded controller, I'd really rather have that freedom even though I could have fucked up the fan control in the process
@mjg59 Most of it is much more low level than that and in many cases you are talking about turning an input into an output and putting conflicting voltages on the same wire.
Fan control is minor. If your EC messes up the fan then you'll get a CPU shutdown, and maybe shorten the life of components a bit.
artemist@etchedpixels @mjg59 Linux is certainly capable of destroying the machine it's running on when booting with device trees on some boards. It directly controls the pmics and can overvolt the cpu.