Libreboot Adds Support For The Once Common HP Elite 8200 SFF PC

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Libreboot Adds Support For The Once Common HP Elite 8200 SFF PC

The HP Elite 8200 was once popular and very common among workplaces and can still be found used/refurbished for a little more than $100 for this small form factor PC. Libreboot has now added support for the HP Elite 8200 as its newest desktop port for this Intel Sandy Bridge era system...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Libreboot-HP-Elite-8200

[kpedersen]

That's quite cool. I have about 8 of these things liberated from work in my garage (though tend to mainly use the z420 and z400, also liberated).

If anyone is going to buy one of these due to the libreboot support, do note that the PCI-E slot doesn't fit a full sized card. You need to get a low profile one.

The integrated Intel GPU works well on Linux and BSD. Weirdly I could never find a decent Windows driver. The auto update bullcrap pulls in something that only half works based on an obviously shared vendor ID.

[andyprough]

My understanding is that the libreboot project Michael is referring to is now no longer fully libre, and is a fork of osboot/coreboot, so you don't get much more freedom than you do with coreboot.

There is a new fully libre project that's competing for the libreboot name that was announced recently: https://libreboot.at/
It goes back to the fully free version of prior libreboot. Some of the free software crowd have thrown their support behind this new libreboot project.

[johanb]

There is a new fully libre project that's competing for the libreboot name that was announced recently: https://libreboot.at/
It goes back to the fully free version of prior libreboot. Some of the free software crowd have thrown their support behind this new libreboot project.

I went to libreboot.at and checked the contributers list, where Leah Rowe was listed as the lead developer which is the same as the citation in this article. Would you care to explain more what the difference is, because to me it looks like the same project even though the domains are different?

[Jabberwocky]

That's quite cool. I have about 8 of these things liberated from work in my garage (though tend to mainly use the z420 and z400, also liberated).

If anyone is going to buy one of these due to the libreboot support, do note that the PCI-E slot doesn't fit a full sized card. You need to get a low profile one.

The integrated Intel GPU works well on Linux and BSD. Weirdly I could never find a decent Windows driver. The auto update bullcrap pulls in something that only half works based on an obviously shared vendor ID.

I put a geforce 1030 low-profile in one of these and donated it my friend's son. They pulled money together and got a SSD for it earlier this year.

I'm sure there's a warehouse somewhere with many of these computers... I mean besides your garage

[andyprough]

I went to libreboot.at and checked the contributers list, where Leah Rowe was listed as the lead developer which is the same as the citation in this article. Would you care to explain more what the difference is, because to me it looks like the same project even though the domains are different?

Good point. I'm not involved in the project, but here is where the source is: https://git.sr.ht/~libreboot/lbwww/log

You can see from the log that Leah's contributions from a year and 3 months ago are listed, and over the past four months the contributions are from Adrien Bourmault and Denis 'GNUtoo' Carikli. You can see the message from 3 months ago which makes clear that this project is breaking away from the one Michael referred to:

We will most likely get a new logo, so it doesn't make sense to
keep this one as it would increase confusion between our genuine
Libreboot, and Leah's Libreboot.

[NSLW]

It's still an outdated system[...]

What do you need more? Intel Core i5 Sandy Bridge, such a powerful processor for browsing the Internet and watching movies.

[kpedersen]

I put a geforce 1030 low-profile in one of these and donated it my friend's son. They pulled money together and got a SSD for it earlier this year.

Nice. That ends up quite a nice machine. And actually, that is a good point. The HDD that comes with these things is definitely a bottleneck. It is bizarrely slow, so much so that I thought it was broken until they all ended up pretty much testing the same.

The main reason I grabbed them originally is because I intended to make a macOS build server. They are well supported for a Hackintosh. Admittedly I only needed one or two rather than hoarding so many haha.

[molletts]

The integrated Intel GPU works well on Linux and BSD. Weirdly I could never find a decent Windows driver. The auto update bullcrap pulls in something that only half works based on an obviously shared vendor ID.

Seems to be a bit of a recurring theme... We've got some Elite 8100 Nehalem systems at work. They don't have integrated graphics (Core i7 870) so they have Radeon HD 4600 cards instead. Again, great in Linux but not on Windows - the WHQL-certified and AMD-branded driver that comes in-box and via Windows Update doesn't work. It detects and identifies the card correctly but just does 1024x768 with no acceleration on a single monitor. Force-installing the Win7 driver from ATI/AMD works fine, until something gives Windows the urge to "update" it...

Actually, I've always found HP kit to be quirky - firmware bugs, hardware oddities, inexplicably poor performance, etc. It's just that it's normally Linux that needs the workarounds, not Windows, presumably because they test the kit with Windows and fix any showstoppers. (These older systems, of course, haven't been tested with current Windows versions, which is why the problems are showing up.)

[kn00tcn]

Sorry, you have been blocked
You are unable to access tonymacx86.com

great job, i cant even open it for the first time, never seen CF do this instant block without even bothering to show any captcha

What do you need more? Intel Core i5 Sandy Bridge, such a powerful processor for browsing the Internet and watching movies.

you also need the mobo to last especially if proprietary, the psu to last if it's proprietary, potentially lower power usage on a newer system, the gpu might not actually be good enough at higher desktop resolutions or heavy websites, the gpu doesnt support vp8/vp9/hevc decode, doesnt support vulkan (ivy does?)

i was about to say haswell would be much more preferred (the last gen that can remove ME?), assumed there was no vp9 either, but apparently "An open-source hybrid driver was developed which supports partial VP8 encoding and VP9 decoding acceleration under Linux by utilizing both the integrated GPU and CPU.[10][11]"

i guess most of that can be dealt with by using a dedicated card for more power draw... also what if the cpu is swapped with ivy, it's socketed isnt it?