speaking of firmware limitations … how is sata III limited to 3gbs ? and NVME which is newer and faster is not limited …? also how come the proprietary firmware of the nvme works in a FSF RYF gnu/linux distribution by default ? or is my assumption wrong ?
the max speed on the SATA ports in use is set to 3Gbps in coreboot, that’s how
I don’t know what you’re asking here.
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i mean my assumption was that PureOS beeing a gnu/linux distribution based on debian testing but also vetted by the FSF’ RYF certification would require no binary blobs in the firmware … the NVME Samsung drive (960evo/pro) uses proprietary firmware in the linux-kernel to run is it not ?
I don’t see anything indicating this is the case, and PureOS definitely does not include such binaries
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The confusion of @reC might be that PureOS is shipped without blobs (that would be loaded into devices at runtime), but that there is no requirement that FSF endorsed distros are not allowed to talk to devices which contain firmware in a flash/ROM.
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that seems to be the case. i can’t see any evidence that suggest - under linux - a proprietary driver/firmware. on windows it’s another story.
in Windows the Samsung “Magician” software manually/auto-updates the firmware of the ssd - how is this done under linux ? manually i assume ? do newer linux-kernels come packed with the modules that update the storage unit as well ?
Samsung Magician available for GNU/Linux as program for terminal or FreeDOS image with this utility. But in my case, speed limited by coreboot. =((((((
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if they did, I’m not sure what hardware one could actually use
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fwupd or whatever software Samsung has for Linux. The kernel itself doesn’t handle device firmware updates of any sort. You seem to be confusing on-device firmware with binary blobs required to be loaded with/by the drivers (also confusingly called firmware)
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a little less confusing now ! thanks !
It’s an unexplained secret quirk in the SATA implementation - where the only reliable workaround was to limit the SATA to SATA II speeds. There is no particular reason to assume that the same quirk exists in the NVMe implementation.
Just between you and me, unless you are strapped for cash, using SATA with an SSD via M.2 interface is a crime against humanity (for desktop / laptop class computers). NVMe is soooooooo much faster - and drives with good performance are not ridiculously expensive.
It would probably be cheaper for Purism to stop offering the SATA drive than to spend even more time trying to work out what value to poke into what register to make SATA work properly - at least for the M.2 interface (I wasn’t clear whether the same problem occurs with SATA on the secondary drive).
I really noticed the jump from an HDD to a SATA SSD. I can barely tell the difference between an SATA SSD and an NVMe SSD. Maybe I would notice if making a backup of my system or copying huge files, but I honestly can’t see the difference in daily use.
It seems to me that SSDs are like CPUs. They have gotten so fast, that there is limited marginal utility to each advance in the technology. If you give me a 5th generation Intel Core PC and an 8th generation Intel Core PC, I can’t see any difference, unless I bother to benchmark them. I also can’t tell the difference between the speed of a Snapdragon 845 and a Snapdragon 810 in a phone, except that the phone with a Snapdragon 810 gets hotter and the battery doesn’t last as long.
What I most notice about recent tech is how small and light it has become, and the fact that it is so hard to repair. I have gotten to the point, where I don’t even want the latest technology, because I can’t open up the case and look inside. I get no enjoyment out of using something where I can’t look at the circuit board or figure out how it works.
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We all back up our systems, don’t we? 
I notice the difference in boot time and in backup time.
(For me, copying huge files is often “across the network” and hence completely limited by the gigabit ethernet, not the disk.)
the thing is only modern boards support nvme. sata 2 and 3 are usable on older stuff so it’s a good thing for some people but yes the difference between nvme and sata is day and night.
well there are some nvme drives that are not so fast but my samsung 970 pro 512GB was a steal when i bought it and it still is one of the fastest on the market. nvme is so good because it was designed with ssd in mind not started as a hdd technology.
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same problem with 2.5" SATA interface as well
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M.2 2280 is also much more compact than a typical 2.5" SATA III SSD. The latter is a little bit longer, and much wider. That’s got to be a good thing for ultra-compact case / laptop applications.
You can probably fit 2 x M.2 2280 NVMe SSDs in the space that one 2.5" SATA III SSD occupies (but you would need 8 x PCIe 3.0 lanes available).
also there’s the issue that USUALLY only one pcie 3.0/4.0(current on proprietary hardware) 4x is wired directly to the CPU rest goes through the chipset. sata 3 is still arround for compatibility reasons and well you CAN get m2 variants not just big-ass 2.5.