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Comment by jfrunyon | Hacker News Reader

ARM is significantly more open than x86.

For "x86", read "the PC platform" - which is the thing that gave us modern general purpose computing, and we obsolete it at our peril.

> For "x86", read "the PC platform" - which is the thing that gave us modern general purpose computing, and we obsolete it at our peril.

Wasn't the Apple I the modern general purpose computer?

ARM popularised the concept of bootloader locking. I don't think so.

Has absolutely zero to do with either openness or ARM.

It certainly does. An architecture isn't just about the ISA, but the culture around it too. The culture around ARM mobile phones and tablets heavily emphasized bootloader locking, which accelerated its spread to x86 too - which works contrary to the notion of openness.

If its good they'll make a hack to unlock it. Have phones that were sold locked, so many security bugs that they are easily unlocked.

> The culture around ARM mobile phones and tablets heavily emphasized bootloader locking

Virtually all of which are user-unlockable. But keep telling me how unopen they are?

(BTW, those of us who actually want secure systems very much appreciate the fact that malware can't overwrite my boot sector without a hardware-level vulnerability.)

I am aware of exactly 0 ARM motherboard makers that make boards with socketed (read upgradeable) CPUs. I know they are made for PowerPC. I know there are tons of x86 ones.

For a while I bought motherboards with upgradable CPUs. I quit doing that after a while because by the time I wanted to upgrade, the newer chips required a new socket, I needed faster memory that the motherboard didn't support, etc.

I wasn't aware that it had to be socketed to be open?

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