FYI I've received a *huge* influx of Libreboot laptop orders on Minifree, due to Minifree's recent presence on both the Hacker News and Slashdot homepages.
I'm processing all of the orders and assigning machines to all of them. You will all be contacted with status update soon.
I have an army of ThinkPads destined for a date with UPS (and Fedex, for USA/Canada customers - UPS for Europe, on most orders).
The old Notabug repositories are being kept, of course, and I'll continue pushing to those aswell, but they are to be considered a backup solution.
Notabug is constantly overloaded, and runs on an older Gogs. Codeberg runs on Forgejo which is much more up to date (same codebase as Gogs, but nicer features).
news announcement on libreboot.org to follow. i'm moving it all.
notabug has had constant perfromance issues for months now and i've finally decided to just move; no self-hosting git yet until fedi is available/stable in forgejo
notabug has too many users and the admin don't upgrade anything, so often shows HTTP 500 in the evenings
i'm moving all the git repos of my projects to codeberg. i'm keeping notabug as a backup, but codeberg will become main
news announcement on libreboot.org to follow. i'm moving it all.
notabug has had constant perfromance issues for months now and i've finally decided to just move; no self-hosting git yet until fedi is available/stable in forgejo
Btw today is Trans Day Of Visibility. I'm late as usual, I'm always working on stuff so I forgot! But it's still TDOV and this post counts! I literally sat on my computer all day in Vim, writing code on some asinine build system written in bash.
I'm a nonbinary trans person who likes computers and rants on IRC all day.
I don't experience the same of discrimination some trans folk do; I recognise my privilege that I'm employed by my own company, have good friends/family, a good life. I'm lucky.
I hope one day we live in a world where trans people are accepted everywhere.
Where when a trans person does something great, people focus on that, on the merits of the person, rather than being "weird" that they're trans. Because we're normal people.
For example:
When one of us becomes the first trans prime minister or president of a country, I want you to focus on their merit as a politician. Not obsess that they're trans.
That's my brand. It's how I want to be treated. On my merits alone.
Did a T500 quad-core mod today, for a customer. The customer had purchased a quad-modded T500 from a random eBay person, but it wasn't booting properly, so it got sent to me for repair.
I didn't take photos, but when I took the board out, I could see that the solder was really bad (cold joints). I re-did the whole mod, and it boots up again.
I really enjoy doing these mods. I also upgraded this machine's internal SPI flash to 16MB Winbond W25Q128FVSIG, rather than the built-in 8MB Macronix IC.
I've reduced the cost of the 960GB SSD upgrade, for laptops sold via https://minifree.org/
These laptops come with Libreboot and Debian Linux pre-installed - or if you request it, another distro or a BSD (e.g. OpenBSD/FreeBSD) will be installed.
These are secure machines, with full disk encryption by default. Libreboot replaces proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware.
5 year warranty and free technical support for all orders. Sales fund the Libreboot project, which I'm founder and lead developer of.
I was waiting for Gitea to finish work on federated issues / pull requests. Now I know why Gitea hasn't done it. The community working on Gitea forked it into Forgejo, for opsec purpose: https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/
I was waiting for Gitea to finish work on federated issues / pull requests. Now I know why Gitea hasn't done it. The community working on Gitea forked it into Forgejo, for opsec purpose: https://gitea-open-letter.coding.social/
@libreleah I'm really waiting for code forges to federate. Sucks to create accounts on five different code forges just to create issues or maybe create minor pull requests. I really have to thank @Codeberg for actually pushing ahead with code forge federation by forking Gitea into Forgejo.
I did this, against others who responded to the thread.
Libre software is about freedom, and choice; we do not attempt to restrict or stifle people in any way.
I prefer that everyone use libre software as much as possible, but if I meet someone who thinks my software isn't good enough for them, I *will* advise about alternatives.
It's simply the right thing to do.
Libreboot policy was put to the ultimate test today, on reddit. I chose to comply fully with the policy:
Today I learned: some ThinkPad X220 Tablet machines have WSON8 flash ICs.
This X220T now has a Winbond W25Q128FVSIG installed.
X220 vs X230 is an interesting case, because they both support these configurations: 8, 8+4 or 16, with 8+4 meaning that the 2nd IC footprint is used (unpopulated in these pics).
In single-IC configuration (8MB) as seen on X220/X220T, upgrading to 16MB is much easier.
I'm about to test a 16MB libreboot ROM on this. If it works, fantastic!
So far so good with the Libreboot 20221214 release. Oddly enough, the usage stats on my httpd show that a lot more people are reading about it, compared to the previous release.
I announced the new release here, released yesterday on 14 December 2022:
Lots of new boards and some nice features added. It's a "testing" release but it's basically stable, on most boards.
I'm aiming to release again in the new year, with a heads-like Linux distro in flash, but we'll see.
So far so good with the Libreboot 20221214 release. Oddly enough, the usage stats on my httpd show that a lot more people are reading about it, compared to the previous release.
I announced the new release here, released yesterday on 14 December 2022:
Fun fact: ROM images in libreboot with "seabios_grubfirst" in the filename should never ever be used. I've deleted the build option for them, today, in the build system. My reasoning is explained in the commit itself:
Laptops sold on https://minifree.org/ now come with *Libreboot* pre-installed, replacing insecure proprietary BIOS/UEFI firmware. Osboot recently merged with and became part of Libreboot.
Laptops come with Debian Linux, or other distro/BSD (e.g. OpenBSD, FreeBSD) per request.
I'm currently working on the osboot/libreboot merger that I alluded to in the last Libreboot release. I'm about 40% done as I write this, and I started today!
Osboot is becoming part of Libreboot. The projects are merging and will operate as one, under current osboot policy.
Current osboot policy shall be known unofficially as:
@libreleah Yay!