Kevin Keijzer

I do things with coreboot, Debian and OpenWrt, and I rarely click "Accept".

- Exclusively using GNU/Linux and other free and open source software.
- No proprietary BIOS/UEFI anywhere.
- Self-hosting everything.
- Mobile phone-free.

Interlunium: https://interlunium.nl
Appdwang: https://appdwang.nl

Last Notes

2025-12-07 21:11:29 GMT

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Oh for many more years. Even on my Lenovo X230 I can do almost all of my work without any issues.
And yes, nearly all of the parts can still be bought new. There's lots of factories in China selling them.
If this really becomes unworkable in the future, I hope by then there will be RISC-V implementations that are similarly open / low on blobs.
Of course there already are ARM SoCs now that come close, like the Rockchip SoCs PINE64 uses. But they're not faster than Intel Ivy Bridge.

2025-12-07 21:01:11 GMT

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They're the last generation without Boot Guard, where coreboot has native raminit code, and where the ME firmware can be almost completely overwritten with 0xff. With all newer x86_64 hardware at least one of those points is no longer the case.
I'd have to say that compared to ARM SoCs that are comparatively free/open, even the much more recent ones, Ivy Bridge is still *much* faster.
A desktop with an i7-3770, for instance, can be used for almost anything, even today.

2025-12-07 20:46:23 GMT

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We use Ivy Bridge era laptops and desktops running coreboot with the GRUB payload as the boot firmware, with the Intel ME stripped down to the BUP partition.
On top of that we run Debian with only the main repository (also not non-free-firmware).
For our networking it's all OpenWrt, primarily on Turris Omnia routers and old ath79 access points (so no firmware blobs there).
We don't use physical phones at all; only SIP with softphones. And I'm not sure why we'd need TVs at the office.

2025-12-07 20:35:18 GMT

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I'd have to agree to legal terms and conditions I both personally don't accept and that go against my company's policies in order to try these things out, so that's what makes it rather complicated.
The situation with Sailfish OS is currently not that different from a random Android device or iPhone: I don't agree with the legal terms and conditions, so I can't use it.
As long as Sailfish OS comes with a EULA with license restrictions (point 3) it's not Free Software or Open Source.

2025-12-07 20:16:34 GMT

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Most people around me don't use mobile phones either, and definitely not smartphones, but I'm guessing LineageOS, GrapheneOS, /e/OS, etc. are examples of AOSP-derived OSes that are not proprietary by itself.
Of course all of the bootloaders, firmware, device drivers, etc. of the phones it runs on are proprietary, but I doubt that's any different with the (Sony?) devices Sailfish OS runs on. And in addition to that, the GUI is also proprietary, which is not the case with AOSP.

2025-12-07 19:13:07 GMT

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Full disclosure: I don't own or use any mobile phone or tablet whatsoever, so I'm absolutely not saying that people should be using AOSP instead.
I'm just saying that Sailfish OS in its current state isn't really better than some AOSP-derived OS without Google Play Services. In fact it even contains more proprietary code.

2025-12-07 19:08:57 GMT

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The graphical UI that handles all the user input and display output being proprietary is a big deal.
Being a small player is no reason to defend keeping your code proprietary. None of the true mobile Linux OSes do that either. There is never an excuse to keep your code proprietary and there's no such thing as open sourcing "too early". It should be FOSS from the first commit.
At the end of the day Sailfish OS is more closed and proprietary than AOSP is. That's sad, but it's true.

2025-12-07 16:48:38 GMT

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"Not 100% proprietary" is still not FOSS. Sorry.
I don't think anyone is claiming it's "completely closed source" either. But at the time of writing it simply has an unacceptable end user license for many people, including me.
Regarding promises: talk is cheap, show us the code. Once there are no proprietary bits left and there is no more EULA to accept, I'll most probably change my stance on Sailfish OS.