Hi All, [Rant Alert] I have been doing a bit of background reading about the CPU faults nicknamed Spectre and Meltdown, and have been getting more and more annoyed by what I have read. I would like to ask you all for your opinions on whether I am justified in my feelings.
As I understand it Spectre and Meltdown is a complicated story, and covers several different security flaws within the design of processors. It also affects almost all processors currently in use. The flaws cannot be fixed but their vulnerabilities can be mitigated by software. Some flaws require the CPU manufacturers to issue changes to the processor microcode. Initially Intel and AMD both announced that they will only issue microcode mitigations for processors made since approx' 2011; older processor families will remain vulnerable to the security flaws. For Intel it means Core 2 Duo and older will not be fixed. For AMD it is Athlon and similar. I find this annoying as it is a strength of Linux that it can make machines with these older CPUs perfectly usable, especially for normal office type work. Are we now expected to throw perfectly good machines away just because Intel and AMD will not accept full responsibility for the mess that they have created? My annoyance levels increased when I read that, as of this month (May 2019), Intel were dropping microcode support for first generation i3/i5/i7 processors! Can we expect this to be an annual event: security support will end for CPU families that reach their 10th birthday? My anger reached boiling point when I read that some hardware manufacturers are refusing to pass on the microcode updates as an excuse to generate increased sales! Allegedly Acer, Asus and Gigabyte are bad, refusing to support hardware that is only 3 or 4 years old. Dell are supposed to be good at supporting older hardware. My current PCs are now no longer supported. What are my options to replace them? - Am I over reacting? The flaws are allegedly difficult to exploit, so just relax and carry on. - Buy the newest Intel CPU that I can afford, and expect it to eventually become too dangerous to use. - Switch to AMD, which is allegedly not as badly affected, and hope their support is better than Intel. - Only buy Dell machines. Sorry for the long post but I needed to unload. Cheers, Barry T -- Lubuntu-users mailing list Lubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com Modify settings or unsubscribe at: https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/lubuntu-users
