CPU Buying Guide

CPUs

As long as the CPU has been kept cool throughout it's lifetime, it should be ok

T5500/5600 with 2MB L2 cache
- T5600 costs $6 on average, and is the best low cost option. However, the T7200 adds 2MB of L2 cache, which seriously helps with performance. It's not worth penny pinching on.
T7200/7400/7600 with 4MB L2 cache.
- T7200 costs $14 on average and is most cost effective.
- The performance difference between the T7200 and T7600 is marginal, yet the T7600 is rarer and costs $45 on average. Save that money for an SSD.

Coreboot Laptops

Coreboot is an open source, user configurable BIOS. However, it does use a few proprietary blobs here and there.

These require hardware flashing. Due to Intel Management Firmware, proprietary blobs are required for newer Intel motherboards to even power up.

ThinkPad T430/X230
- xx30 BIOS Whitelist Removal
- xx30 BIOS Mod with Old Keyboard - Since Libreboot's ROMs each can use a different keyboard layout, would it be possible to modify Coreboot to work with the old xx20 keyboard? Or just mod the official BIOS to do so?
ThinkPad X201
ThinkPad T60p (ATI GPU)
ThinkPad T22 - Back when Coreboot was known as "LinuxBIOS", they installed it on a ThinkPad T22 for Richard Stallman.

Most Intel Chromebooks come with Coreboot preinstalled. SeaBIOS can optionally be installed to add Windows support.

NOTE: The Libreboot components of this wiki was divested into the Official Libreboot Documentation here. Please use that from now on.

Libreboot laptops are certified by the FSF to protect your freedom.

They contain no proprietary blobs of any kind, and have the best support for FSF certified GNU/LInux.