Annoying little stickers telling me things I already know about the hardware I own do not belong on the fucking hardware I own. I meticulously remove that shit before I even turn on the computer for the first time.
I don’t think the GNU/Linux name is even correct anymore. The amount of GNU utils is not as high as it once were and there are so many other components that are important or even essential now that it is somehow unfair to even name GNU so prominently.
systemd/Linux

I smell proprietary in this Intel…
Mother, may I have some more pixels?
In this economy?
At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen?
…May I see it?
No.
2010s: and here we have the 4K screen!!!
2026: 8 bit, take it or leave it
Still has a stupid Windows logo on the
superkey, though.As of 2022 I use a Thinkpad x200 computer, which has a free initialization program (called Libreboot when it was installed, but now called GNU Boot) and a free operating system (Trisquel GNU/Linux). It was not sold that way by Lenovo, however; small businesses buy them used, recondition them, and install the free software. This is one of the computers endorsed by the FSF. I’ve used other Thinkpad models that similarly respect users’ freedom since the early 2010s.
[…]
I have prepared the images to be flashed💾, an EEPROM programmer (Raspberry Pi Pico H)✏️ and configured my Lenovo Thinkpad T480’s BIOS settings to receive the flash💻. Now I’m just waiting for the test clip to arrive in the mail. ETA tomorrow. Libreboot, here we go.
Not wanting to knock you, but Libreboot on a T480 is fake. There’s nothing “libre” about it.
Only until Ivy Bridge are you able to remove FSP, MRC and most of the Intel ME code.
They also don’t have grub-only builds anymore, so security went to shit.
Might aswell just build coreboot at that point.
https://libreboot.org/docs/install/t480.html
It’s a significant improvement to me that it’s open source and that - according to the above description - Intel ME is indeed removed.
Have you flashed Libreboot on a T480, then taken a dump of the chip and confirmed that Intel code is still on there?
I also don’t understand why I would need grub when I use systemd’s bootloader. I only want to replace the BIOS.
You may be able to disable the ME to some extent, although I believe the functionality that needs to be retained on newer versions is larger.
You will however still need the Intel FSP blob, which is a huge chunk of proprietary binary code. On anything below Skylake you still need at least an MRC blob.
I haven’t taken a dump on a T480 chip, yet, so you tell me what that’s like.
What I meant by grub was the init payload that gets loaded after BUP. Libreboot uses SeaBIOS first now, which is bad because anybody can start anything and you can’t set a password. This is before systemd or any OS.
This keyboard design hasn’t been on ThinkPads for at least 10 years (except for the 25th Anniversary ThinkPad), sadly.
that seems like a t420 or some similar model









