What are the computers that can run a free and open source operating system without requiring closed source firmwares? To qualify it should have
- open source boot firmware and the ability to boot without having to load binary blobs
- no proprietary GPU firmware (I'm looking at you, RPi) and an open source graphic driver with video acceleration would be, well, nice.
I don't know what's the state of Lima driver for Mali 400/450 GPU, and Panfrost for Mali T and G series. I think the Vivante has a fully functional open source driver (Etnaviv) and can be found on i.MX6 platforms. But there are so many licensed i.MX6 boards and so few that are properly documented.
So far, I know there are 2 laptops: tthe Pinebook pro (Rockchip RK3399 SOC with Mali T860 MP4 GPU) and Olimex TEREX 64 (Allwinner A64 64-bit Cortex-A53 processor, Mali-400 GPU). Do they require loading blobs to boot? Is the video acceleration usable?
There's also the Novena project which will be much more expensive (Freescale iMX6, Cortex-A9 ARM CPU, Vivante GC2000 GPU)
Open sourced hardware design would grant bonus points, but let's not dream too much for the moment.