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The article does mention that Stallman uses a "rather slow" Lemote Yeeloong laptop because it's the only laptop with a free BIOS.

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I thought it was the CPU microcode, not the BIOS? Because there are open source BIOSes that you can flash to a variety of more powerful machines.

you are probably correct. the article just mentioned the BIOS. i looked around and could not find specific mention of the microcode in the laptop's specs :http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Freest#Lemote_Yee... or on Stallman's page : http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html or in this FSF paper page on free hardware: http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/how_hardware_vendors_can_hel...

Which is untrue. I just purchased a Genesi Smartbook, which uses u-Boot and wasn't designed in a fascist country with a penchant for electronic espionage.

is u-Boot a System BIOS? it appears to be a Bootloader: http://sourceforge.net/projects/u-boot/

Bootloaders are executed after the BIOS.

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