@phnt >since the Pentiums has microcode burned into the die itself that isn't even source-available
That's hardware, not software.

I of course welcome fully free hardware designs and non-proprietary manufacturing techniques, but that does not exist, while fully free software does.

>A trustworthy proprietary-free software means nothing when you have untrusted hardware that can do whatever it wants.
Proprietary software is pretty much guaranteed to be malicious due to the typical lack of consequences of malicious software and many cases of proprietary malware has been found.

Some de-capping enjoyers love decapping CPUs and reading out the circuit layout and microcode and so far no malicious circuits in x86 or AMD64 CPUs have ever been found (probably because why bother putting such hard evidence in hardware and having to hide it from everyone who makes and receives the hardware, when you can just do it in software?).

If I was Intel, I wouldn't backdoor the hardware microcode, as that is impossible to encrypt for performance reasons and also how someone is guaranteed to go decap the chip in 20 years - instead I would put a backdoor into the microcode updates and encrypt it and leave the instruction set documented (good luck finding it) and intentionally make the hardware microcode buggy, so almost everyone installs the software update.

>If the certification was written correctly, both of these scenarios would be incompatible >It would mean that almost no hardware would receive the certification
It would mean that *no* hardware would receive the certification and a certification that doesn't apply to any hardware at all is completely useless.

It's up to *you* to make hardware up to your higher standard available and then of course the certification will be updated to your higher standard.

>The world where the FSF labels something as "respects your privacy" while it clearly might not simply would not exist.
Even a backdoored CPU does respect your privacy until there is an attacker that exploits the backdoor and exfiltrates your private data.

Meanwhile, proprietary software is well known for being spyware that sends a bunch of stuff over the internet.

>In the real world, it means to me, that there's almost no point in trying to go fully free, when the result cannot be fully trusted.
"Just give up on freedom as you can't be sure your privacy isn't always being respected".

>I simply cannot do my work on hardware that can even run Linux-libre.
You can do work just fine on hardware that runs Linux-libre.

The vast majority of work with a computer only requires a computer with intel integrated graphics, or a 700 series nvidia GPU and a 1000BASE-T NIC, which GNU/Linux-libre works perfectly fine on.

I am confident you could do you work on Trisquel GNU/Linux-libre if you tried.

>I prefer the more pragmatic approach of using free software as much as possible, while also running proprietary software when I need to.
Well, there it is.

You gleefully run lots of proprietary malware, but you're critical of people who run no proprietary malware and happen to use proprietary hardware?

>the Linux ecosystem
A ecosystem is something that has naturally occurred that you just observe - you don't question if it is right for the owl to eat the mouse, you observe that it occurs.

The kernel, Linux was only possible because of GNU and what free software is built on is the floating island of GNU and how Linux is proprietary software is something I'm not afraid to point out.

>repelent for others that might want to switch to Linux
If your mindframe is switching to "Linux" and thinking it will be exactly like windows or macos, rather than having a mindframe of escaping to freedom by switching to GNU, no matter the proprietary sabotage, you may as well not bother.

>using Librebooted ThinkPads is the only right way.
Liebreboot is proprietary, so it's the wrong way.

The easiest way to get a system when you install only free software to the BIOS level is a GNUbooted thinkpad, but there are even better KGPE-D16 based systems.

My GNU/Linux recommendation is to install a free distro, but in cases of shit hardware, I do point out which components of the hardware won't operate without proprietary software.