@RedTechEngineer @pernia @romin @mischievoustomato Raptors POWER9 computers aren't a viable replacement to GNUbooted computers, as they're too expensive (freedom shouldn't be only for those who are so ludicrously rich that 6,000 USD or 10,000 USD is nothing to them) - the price would need to ½ or ¼ or ⅛ or more to make it viable (which could be possible with scale).

The price also makes minor inconveniences like missing ACPI S3 suspend questionable (it's not a cheap computer and it's clearly a profitable business, thus why wasn't the RAMinit finished?).

GNUboot developers are trying to fix the RAMinit on the KGPE-D16 which would allow ACPI S3 suspend to work.


RaptorCS did the original KGPE-D16 & KCMA-D8 ports and some of their POWER9 systems are fully free (they're the only systems with free DDR4 RAMinit), although some models come with an AMD GPU, which run proprietary software (it seems you can just use an integrated ASpeed GPU, which works with free software).


They did make one bad mistake and decide to use a broadcom(!) NIC for their boards, but eventually a free replacement for such software was written, as that NIC wasn't handcuffed.

RaptorCS looked into supporting POWER10, but it can't be used with free software, as DDR5 has proprietary software running on the RAM.