I’m looking at the new 13 Pro. The CNC chassis and haptic trackpad look great, but the locked bootloader is holding me back.
The open EC and hardware switches are a good start, but since the retail boards ship with factory fuses blown (BootGuard/PSB), we can’t actually flash Coreboot or Heads.
I know 9elements and others have been working on porting Coreboot and openSIL to Framework stuff. Since the mainboard is modular anyway, has the team considered selling an unfused “developer” version of the mainboard in the marketplace?
There’s a huge crowd of sysadmins and security people still hoarding old ThinkPads just because they could be Corebooted. Modern ThinkPads are completely locked down now, so that market is wide open for a premium, sleek machine that doesn’t treat firmware like a black box. If Framework offered an unlocked board option, it would instantly become the default choice for the DevOps and security community.
Is this anywhere on the radar, or is anyone else looking for something similar?
Don’t buy intel? I believe they require the fuses blown. A company can’t just “say” these are “developer” laptops, or else FW would already be doing it. Framework did have a few actual developer laptops, without fuses blown. But they were given directly to active developers, not just for sale.
You should confirm by asking FW support directly, but I believe AMD boards don’t have PSB.
Good point on the Intel side, but unfortunately AMD doesn’t fully solve this for retail units.
While AMD leaves PSB optional out of the factory, vendors like Framework blow those fuses before shipping the laptops to customers so standard Secure Boot works. Once that fuse is blown, the CPU is permanently locked to the vendor’s key, and you still can’t flash a custom Coreboot or Heads build yourself.
Edit:
That thread is exactly why I’m asking. If you look at the discussion in there, a developer points out that because of factory fuses, Framework literally had to send out a few special, custom-unfused developer boards to the Coreboot community just to test things. Normal retail buyers can’t get those.
My pitch is basically asking them to finally turn those developer boards into a real product in the marketplace so anyone can buy them.
Have you messaged Framework support? I’ve seen people say PSB is not there. There is a dev in the thread I linked, Ellyqw, who is / was working on it. I don’t believe they were one of the one’s who got an earlier dev laptop. They’re working on AMD, not intel. Maybe I’m just completely mistaken? I thought Ellyqw didn’t have a dev unit.
Ah got it, my bad, I didn’t realize they left PSB unlocked on the AMD 13. That’s actually huge news.
I’m honestly just going to contact Framework support directly or see if I can ping Ellyqw on that thread to find out what the current status is for a stable build. Thanks for correcting me on that!
Coreboot / open bootloader progress can be, not the fastest at times. Trouble is that not a lot people have knowledge and skills in that area. In order to make fast progress. And those who do, like Ellyqw, seem to have a lot of other competing demands for their time. You can see all of their posts from their profile, community.frame.work/u/ellyqw/activity. To see where things were last at.
If you haven’t seen the newest coreboot thread post, it seems the latest Coreboot version supports Framework Laptop 12 now. How quick the AMD 13 Pro gets support will likely just come down to whether anyone with the skills and time has much interest. But considering how popular the 13 Pro is shaping out to become, feels like a higher chance vs previous models that someone will be interested.
Yeah, I’ve been corrected tho. It’s internal use only and flashing Coreboot will result in an unbootable state. I didn’t quickly find the release notes and went to bed before confirming. Alas, the wait continues.
I’d definitely be interested in this too. An unfused developer board would make the 13 Pro much more appealing for people who want Coreboot or Heads and more control over the firmware.
The modular mainboard design seems like a good fit for this. I’d be curious to know if Framework has considered offering a developer-focused board in the future.