PEpeter_d_sherman·Sep 4, 2026
>"Released between 2011 and 2014, AMD's fam15h (and its approximately-contemporaneous relatives, fam10h, fam14h and fam16h) are the final high-performance x86_64 microprocessors lacking most of the limitations newer x86 platforms are encumbered by. In many cases, fam15h hardware can provide a performant, full-featured system, using entirely free and open source software. It enforces no firmware signing (allowing things such as coreboot), can be booted entirely with free firmware (including memory initialization), and it requires no privileged management coprocessor (such as the Platform Security Processor or Management Engine, found on newer AMD and Intel platforms respectively). Where a Board Management Controller is present, it can usually reliably be disabled, or better yet, flashed with OpenBMC [or u-bmc!]. On fam10h,
even microcode i
Read the rest
s unencrypted and unsigned, and can be modified by the user."
Related:
https://canoeboot.org/
>"Canoeboot is a special fork of Libreboot, maintained in parallel to it by the same developer (Leah Rowe), who maintains both projects. Canoeboot removes all binary blobs from coreboot, thereby providing a fully Free Software coreboot distro, unlike Libreboot which has a more pragmatic Binary Blob Reduction Policy which allows Libreboot to support more hardware."
https://github.com/u-root/u-bmc
https://github.com/xoreaxeaxeax/skitter-creek-bath-salts
(Related HN discussion of skitter-creek-bath-salts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49286341)