I'm not sure this is an unpopular opinion. I've seen it suggested multiple times, and IF done correctly (open/transparent) would solve most of the complaints with the ring-zero anti cheats. Still won't solve every cheat, especially hardware, social and perhaps good VMs. I would require the app/game to disclose what it requires to be true.

I would normally figure this out by reading motherboard manuals. Which for SKUs you can buy standalone tend to be on the manufacter's site with no account/paywall. They tend to include all the "if you populate this slot you lose xyz" language. Along with how to change PCIe lane bifercation in bios if nessesary.

While I'd love to see a successful ATX for phones (It's number 1 reason my desktop is x86, 2nd is Steam library).

1) The form factor really fights this.

2) Something needs to change with ARM, cause modular hardware would require device independent ISOs, and that only seams to exist for x86.... IDK about RISCV

To be fair, when I bought my Pinephone, I got the convergence one despite being unsure if I'd be able to use it as a daily driver. The price diff isn't much and well, I would rather have the slightly better specs. And I would assume most made the same choice. So I doubt there's much pressure to stock the lower spec model PP.

To be fair in this case, most would expect this to not be a viable business.

We don't trust them to not turn it back on later...

I install stuff from Debian's repos for 2 reasons. Convience & trust. And while people do complain when maintainers modify packages behavior, I think people would rather have the send my clipboard contents to someone else to be opt-in. Instead of violating their trust!

If this level of modification is required for a package to fit in with the distro's philosophy, maybe better not to include it at all.

I think the answer might be to codify some of these assumptions.

It might help set things apart from say ubuntu, which doesn't engender the same amount of trust such as opt-in.

Personally for me I only care about x86 for 2 reasons.

1) Steam library.

2) And the just works combo of ATX & the ability to use any ISO on almost any x86 machine.

I'm personally scared if x86 dies the open market of ATX and bring your own OS won't exist as every company will just lock you in to only there stuff on their devices.

> I'm personally scared if x86 dies the open market of ATX and bring your own OS won't exist as every company will just lock you in to only there stuff on their devices.

I share this fear, and have for a while. x86/the WinTel era has offered a lot of computing freedom, both hardware and OS wise and I believe we are in real danger of losing that. Not just because of an architecture change in isolation either, but also with the recent age verification stuff, and pushes for requiring "verified platforms" to access certain services, we are quickly heading down a proprietary-OS only world if you actually want to interact with web services.

Who is this "everyone"? Just because RISCV ISA is open doesn't mean the ecosystem will be too. Because wile the ARM ISA is licensable by everyone so in theory everyone can be making X86 PCs, the current PC ARM ecosystem is way worse and way more locked down than X86.

Reminds me when people wanted Intel to die and then they realized AMD started raising their prices with no competition and they tough that maybe AMD isn't their friend and is like any other for profit corporation.

So I have no idea why people want to see the most open PC ecosystem die. What kind of short sighted masochism is this?

I suspect part of it is just the desire for something different. I browse eBay and still get the irrational urge to buy unusual hardware, even though my Sparcstations and Alpha have proven time and time again that the novelty dies away quickly.

Another part is the desire for a fresh start. x86 carries a lot of baggage. There's this idea that a new CPU architecture would somehow stop holding us back. Problem with that idea is that for the most part, x86 doesn't hold us back.

Then of course there's the remnants of the old RISC vs CISC debate that never quite died away.

People will always be fascinated by the what-ifs and if-onlys - "if only Sun had survived to the cloud era" is my personal favorite. It's harmless fun.

RISC-V being an open source ISA does not imply that devices using that ISA won't be locked down.

An open ecosystem in the way that historically emerged around the PC platform seems to be a completely orthogonal issue.

Which will drastically improve things with how the boot sequence(s) work and non-CPU devices are discovered, initialized, and managed, I am sure. So far, SBI doesn't look very promising.

SBI doesn't attempt to handle that, just like EFI doesn't really handle that on x86. Just about every device your x86 computer uses looks like PCI (or on a bus hooked up to PCI), and is handled through those configuration mechanisms rather than via boot firmware.

Requires that someone has physical access, that they can then sell digital access to.

Pretty much every pixel rendered these days was generated by a shader so gpu side you probably already have way more translation options than just a 90° rotation (likely already being used for a rotation of 0°). You'd likely have to write more code cpu side to handle the case of tell the gpu to rotate this please and handle the UI layout diffrence. Honestly not a lot of code.