Re:New Raspberry Pi Model B+
by qalmakka on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @06:08AM
(#16583561)
Man, I hate how ARM OEMs are screwing up the whole platform as a viable PC-replacement platform, and I really wish they would reconsider some of the money-grubbing choices they made. Having a standardised platform such as the x86(-64) PC platform is fantastic for tinkering and long term support and reusability of your machines; things such as binary only drivers with just 2 year support (coff coff Qualcomm) are an absolute shame.
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Re:New Raspberry Pi Model B+
by imtringued on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @07:33AM
(#16583948)
There is also the fact that UEFI is rather suboptimal. They are adopting UEFI on the server chips because they've failed to develop a new standard. They've missed a chance to improve upon UEFI. Now they are stuck inheriting UEFI's problems because otherwise there would be no standard at all.
ugh thats bad news. i can't stand uefi its more a hindrance than help.
Re:New Raspberry Pi Model B+
by SmellyGeekBoy on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @08:28AM
(#16584261)
To be fair, drivers for most x86-compatible hardware are binary-only. Not that I agree with the practice, but there is precedent.
I haven't seen an off-the-shelf x86 machine that actually requires binary-only drivers for essential functionality in a very long time. Sure, there is lots of specialized hardware that no one wrote an open source driver for but you don't buy those from Dell or HP.
Most x86 boxen tend to run tons of proprietary firmware but at least that isn't pinning me down on ancient hacked-up kernel trees.