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Re:ITX Motherboard with an Elbrus CPU by jamesmd on Monday December 28, 2020 @09:49AM (#25559560)
I agree, the bootloader is a massive shame! Personally I’d rather go with a power9 based board. But let’s see where this goes, it’s certainly interesting.
Re:ITX Motherboard with an Elbrus CPU by segfaultbuserr on Monday December 28, 2020 @12:53PM (#25561315)
> I agree, the bootloader is a massive shame!

It reminds me of my Loongson 2F laptop powered by a Chinese MIPS processor, same model previously used by Richard Stallman. For a while (before Thinkpad X200), it was the go-to choice if one wanted a laptop with 100% free boot firmware and zero binary blob (the original boot firmware codebase is buggy and ancient, but with source, later GNU developers made it run GRUB 2). I got it just because it was an interesting non-x86 machine.

It's a bit disappointing that a would-be Russian equivalent couldn't do the same (an understandable problem, the designers of the board have no control over it), otherwise it'll also be a more hackable and interesting platform, at least for those who are fans of exotic non-x86 systems and don't care about price or performance.