Re: How free is Debian
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Hi,
On 9/8/19 6:59 am, John Hasler wrote:
> Shahryar Afifi wrote:
>> Currently I have X61 with Middleton BIOS that claims to be free.
>> Is that also not the case?
>
> We are talking about the microcode that is stored inside the cpu,
> not the BIOS which is x86 code stored in NVRAM on the motherboard.
> In Intel 64 bit cpus this currently includes an entire operating
> system. It can completely bypass Linux without you even knowing
> that it is there. Very useful for large organizations with
> thousands of machines that they need to centrally administer,
> but...
AIUI, when the machine boots, the BIOS loads the CPU microcode on
machine startup *before* Linux (or any other OS for that matter) boot
processes take over. That is, every time the machine is booted, from
cold at least, the CPU microcode is updated from an area within the BIOS
.
If you have a newer microcode, then that /might/ be applied at the OS
level at some point.
Cheers
A.
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