Date Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:54:14 -0800 (PST) From Brandon Howard <> Subject First desktop motherboard supported by LinuxBIOS: GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4 Hi,



The GIGABYTE M57SLI-S4 [1] is the first-ever desktop motherboard

supported by a Free & Open Source BIOS, thanks to AMD engineer Yinghai

Lu who released GPL-licensed code last month. This state-of-the-art

motherboard is based on the NVIDIA nForce 570 SLI chipset and AMD's

latest Socket AM2. It contains tons of advanced features such as:



Support for AMD Athlon 64 X2, Athlon 64 FX and Athlon 64 processors

2X PCI Express x16 slots

3X PCI Express x1 slots

2X PCI slots

3X 1394a (FireWire) ports

10X USB 2.0

16GB maximum memory

SATA RAID

6X SATA 3Gb/s slots.



This motherboard can be obtained today from many retail and online

stores [2] and the source code for the BIOS can be downloaded from the

LinuxBIOS SVN server [3].



This is a huge victory in the quest for a completely Free & Open

Source general-purpose computer that enables users to have full

control over their own hardware. The Free Software Foundation has made

the campaign for a Free BIOS a top priority because it is a key

component in the software stack of personal computers [4]. The need

for a Free BIOS is even more pressing since DRM and Treacherous

Computing have found their way into some proprietary BIOSes and EFI.

From a practical perspective, LinuxBIOS removes the need for ugly

hacks and workarounds in the kernel that compensate for buggy BIOSes 

we can now fix the BIOS ourselves.



I encourage everyone upgrading their desktop computers to consider

getting this motherboard or another one that is supported by

LinuxBIOS.



-Brandon







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