IMHO..

Since it's a niche area, the cost of freedom on PC hardware is just too high.

I think low cost SBC's which have less issues ought to get more attention than they do. Some of these boards can already run on only free software and in some cases users will only miss out on 3d graphics acceleration. Which is to say I think this should be mentioned more, and instruction given on how to go about excluding the blobs.

If after some time it turns out software fixes are good enough for spectre/meltdown on their own without hardware fixes, then libreboot would be a good choice. Otherwise a middle of the ground stop-gap would be coreboot with microcode updates (provided the cost isn't excessive).

On PureOS, I spoke a little soon about it using systemd. It's Debian based, so it might well be but I haven't checked this.

Thanks,

chillfan