[Mageia-dev] free software purity question

Thu Jul 19 04:35:48 CEST 2012

This is not supposed to be a troll, although I expect that some will 
+interpret it as such.  There are two parts; the first is how does this 
+work, followed by some philosophical stuff.  AFTER I get answers to the 
+first part I want to make up my mind about the second part.  Then you 
+can flame.  
+
+It appears that I don't know how things work.  
+
+I prefer open source for a few reasons, but when it comes to 
+motherboard BIOSes there is no real choice, so I just hope 
+that the manufacturers are competent and trustworthy.  What is 
+the story with CPUs and video cards?  
+
+My attitude to non-free firmware is in flux.  At the moment 
+I am annoyed by it, but accept it as a fact of life and just 
+install it.  
+
+In the olden days CPUs and graphics cards were hard wired.  If they 
+didn't work you had to throw them out, change the masks and 
+manufacture new ones.  Remember the Pentium division error?  
+Modern devices are far too complex for that to work.  They 
+have code that is variously known as; firmware, CPU microcode, 
+or a video BIOS.  
+
+Now the bits that I don't know about... 
+
+Does a modern CPU run *at all* without microcode?  I assume that 
+when you buy a CPU it has microcode in ROM on the chip.  
+Then at powerup it copies the code from ROM to working memory 
+where it is run until either powerdown or it is over written with 
+a newer version of the same thing.  Is that right?  
+
+As I understand it, microcode is usually used to emulate CISC 
+instructions on RISC hardware.  Can a consumer tell the difference?  
+Would the manufacturers tell us, even if we asked nicely?  
+If we do know which instructions are run on hardware and which 
+are run in microcode, does is change from one chip to the next?  
+Can gcc be configured to only produce the subset of instructions 
+that run on the hardware?  There are a couple of references in 
+man gcc, but they seem to refer to the PowerPC, not x86.  
+
+Same problem with video cards.  According to Wikipedia, since 
+EGA hit the market in 1984, all video cards have their own BIOS.  
+
+Is *possible* to run anything better than CGA without using 
+closed source code?  If you physically removed the chip 
+containing the video BIOS from a video card would you even be 
+able to look at the motherboard's BIOS?  
+
+Is there any practical, or moral, difference between; 
+downloading and installing the latest firmware on boot, 
+downloading and flashing the video BIOS, 
+flashing the video BIOS from a floppy that came with the video card, 
+waiting until cards with a good BIOS get distributed before buying.  
+
+Should a truly free distribution say; "detected a VGA video 
+card and/or a Pentium II, refusing to install"?  
+
+Is there any choice?  An open source BIOS an arm chip and a 
+text only display?  
+
+-- 
+blind Pete
+Sig goes here...  
+
+