So I discovered that old Dell Latitude (that I blogged about a while ago) is supported by #libreboot and was almost painless to get running
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@libreleah Well I first ran the inject script on the Latitude itself (running NetBSD), and with its slow disk and poor WiFi drivers, took ages cloning git repos. Then it failed because (I think) it kept trying to build some GNU Makefile with system BSD make. Tried again on my Arch desktop and it popped out the ROMs within minutes.
Having seen what it took for my friend to coreboot his T440p though… this Latitude took just running scripts and flashprog. So yeah, I’d say it was the right pain.
@DrinkyBird if you symlink gmake to make in a directory added to PATH, you might be able to run the build system in netbsd - also make some symlinks for compilers and stuff, to get right version.
but yeah the build systems are quite linux-brained in all my boot projects
i installed openbsd earlier this year to port lbmk. ended up porting librewolf instead, because it didn't have librewolf, then i lost my nerve and now i still don't use openbsd yet (gotta port lbmk first), yet now i'm maintaining a web browser for it. tis the way
but yeah just keep a linux machine handy
i read your blog btw. your pre-libreboot post about that machine showed you running windows 7. 😜 won't run (it's uefi only), but 7 can work; see: https://github.com/manatails/uefiseven/
we were talking about you on IRC and i said: that person can't do win7 anymore. i was then shown that project. lets you run win7 on uefi
not sure about win8. 10 and up should work fine. of course, i recommend linux/bsd systems.
lmk if u need help
@libreleah woo I'm famous :D
This laptop is just for occasional tinkering really, its hardware is not very good, and the last time I took it apart I broke the fan connector and there's now a screw through the palmrest :D
I think I did try to symlink gmake, but it failed the same; likely I did it wrong though. But I was too impatient to keep trying on the clumsy slow laptop so I took the easy way out.
@libreleah There is not much (for me) to do with WIndows XP/7 other than bask in some light nostalgia tbh so not really a big deal losing those. Certainly a benefit if I won't have to hunt for the right drivers in Dell's obscurely named self-extracting archives anymore...
@DrinkyBird anyway basically i'm too lazy to do util binaries. i ould do those in future and then injecting those files would be easy. rather than cloning sources and building everything - and then it could be more easily ported to BSDs because all of the utils in question have ports in the BSDs. actually, it could be very well supported. lbmk is all source-based. source-based package manager, like the gentoo package manager, for everything that it manages. it does use some host-provided utils/libs.
@DrinkyBird it was just the right amount of pain, i take it