[Upon researching to buy a FSF RYF certified hardware, a few of which were
using Trisquel, reached here]
[avoiding if & buts at the risk of some of the below going wrong to keep the
post simple, links are provided for more details]
W.r.t GNU/Linux Kernel on Meltdown & Spectre:
a. Meltdown has been fixed purely in software by 4.15 Kernel [1]
b. Spectre variant 2 fixes also went by 4.15 (note that this in addition
requires the kernel to be built with compiler supporting "retpoline", GCC 7.3
has it), all pure software changes
c. Spectre variant 1 fixes is expected to be available by 4.16-rc1 (would
probably be released by this weekend), again pure software changes
Weekly coverages on related Kernel development, see [2-4]
Now w.r.t (b), there is some confusion (for me), in one of the below lwn
links it has been mentioned that to fix Spectre v2, there are 2 options,
either microcode update (for IBRS) or using retpoline (except SkyLake). Linus
T says [6] that it has been fixed with retpoline, but is seems there is more
to it than he is aware, in the reply David W (who had been working on these
patches) says that IBPB support is also required along with retpoline. IBPB &
IBRS are features added by microcode update. And Greg KH [5] also says he
needs to update microcode. So there appearance to be a difference in what
Linus & LWN update says vs David W & Greg KH
So expect for the confusion on (b), other things are entirely handled in
software.
[1]
lkml.kernel.org/r/CA+55aFzARtx-nA=d1j7vlolf4fhmjlyriq-pkkoexjutuho...@mail.gmail.com
[2] https://lwn.net/Articles/742702/
[3] https://lwn.net/Articles/742984/bigpage
[4] https://lwn.net/Articles/744039/bigpage
[5] http://kroah.com/log/blog/2018/01/19/meltdown-status-2/
[6] https://lwn.net/Articles/745112/
[7] https://lwn.net/Articles/745113/
