/tech/ - Technology★

>>807767 (OP)

>16x9

>Perfect

>>807767 (OP)

it would be interesting to see how windows functions on this

Purism started off as absolute cancer, when their v1 shipped they didn't even have open source touchpad drivers, it seems they've redirected their efforts into being a good company.

Lunduke had their CEO on his show and it was encouraging to see how much is open now and how they're interacting with other open source projects.

Feels weird man, because of how badly they started I am still wary but we're very close to non botnet new x86 CPUs because of these guys.

>>807786

>All purism staff are debian or coreboot devs

>HEY GUIZ CAN I RUN WINDOORZ?

At the very least they will know how Microsoft feels whenever someone asks them to support linux on their surface line.

I feel like they are still a little bit of a joke. I think the company is fine right now, but they need to ship a good product that reflects there current situation. Little news blurbs like these are nice, but it isn't going to create as big of a PR thing as releasing a new product would. If there phone goes well, people's view on them will definitely change.

I'm still not sure if I want to back there phone though since it is pretty expensive. I could use a dumb phone + pda/laptop and it would be a lot cheaper for a somewhat similar expensive. If I just wanted to switch to something like copperhead or replicant, I would need to buy a completely new phone anyways (the cheapest phone that they support is a few hundred cheaper than the librem 5 IIRC). Although running GNU/Linux on a phone would be cool, I'm not sure how good the experience would be without a proper keyboard. I'm open to hearing why I should get it, else give me more FUD. I want to have a firm decision and not just panic buy it since I only have this weekend to decide.

Can't some company just buy old IBM thinkpad designs from Lenovo, adapt it to new 4:3 or 3:2 13 inch screens like ones you see in iPad's or Microsoft tablets, and start producing new hardware with complete backwards compatibility with existing chink accessories like keyboards, palmrests and nipples?

At this point, I'm planning to just move away from Intel entirely, and never give them a penny again. The Pinebook (ARM) laptop sounds interesting. There's also that MIPS-based one (Loongson), but seems to be hard to get ahold of unless you live in or travel to China.

But most likely I'll just go with an ARM SBC, and avoid laptops entirely.

>very close to non botnet new x86 CPUs

you can do the same thing they're doing to disable ME yourself now, the software and documentation are out, you just need $100 worth of shit, a pi and some cables/clamps. you also need to be able to take the risk if you brick the board or processor.

the risk and experience doing it seem well worth it though if your going to consider dropping $1700 on a new laptop.

More interested in their smartphone. Just need a good browser, email client, maps and streaming music player, everything else can suck a dick

>>807840

Check the asus c201, it is a librebooted laptop with every driver that is open source (except GPU and Wifi dongle, but both aren't vital)

I WANT A PDA WITH A HARDWARE KEYBOARD AND FREE DRIVERS

Is such a thing possible, and am I allowed to dream about it?

>>807767 (OP)

>Completely Disable Intel’s Management Engine

>Disable Intel’s Management Engine

WEW

Still not RYF certified

>What does /tech/ think of this company?

I don't trust them.

They have blatantly lied more than once.

They promised that the ME would be removed completely without being sure that they could.

They did made an effort to "neutralise" it (to say that most of it seems to not work but without guaranty) but I still won't trust any hardware that isn't released has free from the beginning.

aka only hardware like this:

https://www.raptorcs.com/content/base/products.html

>>807840

Been trying for a long while. Beaglebone, odroids, pinebook. It's just not there yet.

The pinebook is too flimsy. Bad keyboard. Low volume output. Crude trackpad. Too slow for use as a daily driver. Good value for the price, and cute/shiny, but it's quite limited.

>>815299

>Too slow

This. Just looked it up, as I also like the idea of getting away from Intel, and its only 1.2 GHz? That can't be right. I mean even the Libreboot Thinkpads are at 2.26 at the minimum, and support 8GB of RAM.

>>807917

I can see TALOS II being a great choice for an alternative architecture on the desktop, and compatibility won't be a problem, as distros such as Debian and Fedora have full support for it.

On the subject of purism, I think we really need to take a look at this page. It looks like they want to have up-to-date hardware, while sticking to a roadmap that eventually leads a Fully, 100% free computer. It also shows where they are at this point

https://puri.sm/learn/freedom-roadmap/

I'm really looking forward to puri.sm's tablet, when that's released. Dell's 2016 XPS12 was wonderful except for generally crashiness and oh an instant KP if you tried to put it to sleep. Thanks Broadcom! With a tablet I'm also not expecting it to be great at gaymes, which is the reason I'm less interested in purism's other stuff.

>>807915

It's technically possible but it's not going to be mass produced. The closest thing you can do is either build one from an Arduino or RISC V.

>>807840

>I'll just go with an ARM SBC, and avoid laptops entirely

This is what I've been considering lately. An Orange Pi PC with adapter and a tiny screen would make a cute frugal diy setup for like 60 bucks.

>>815396

Aren't Pi's full of closed source firmware?

>>807767 (OP)

>$1200 - $1600 for a laptop

Might as well be a Macfag

>>815396

The "Orange Pi PC Plus" is an upgraded version with an 8GB eMMC module and WiFi antenna

>>815419

They are:

https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers

>The Raspberry Pi requires nonfree software to start up. It can't reach the point of executing free software unless this nonfree program is part of the installed system software.

https://wiki.debian.org/RaspberryPi

>A binary blob used by the GPU must be present on the SD card for the system to boot.

>>815422

I never understood why people use Macbooks as reference to prices of laptops

>>815419

>>815424

>>815423

To be fair Broadcom released documentation and source for their chip, you don't need blobs anymore, there's still blobs in other places just because they haven't ported the new code in yet.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/a-birthday-present-from-broadcom/

>>815419

Depends. On one hand, you have the Raspberry, which was blobbed to hell and back when it came out. On the other, there's Beaglebone, which is fully open if you don't plan on using the gpu. How open are the Oranges? No idea. Probably more than Intel.

>>815423

No, don't buy that shit

Mine overheated stock, had a shitload of problems in making it run with a tv out and then somehow shorted itself and now it's collecting dust

>>815433

>Mine overheated stock

H3 does run hot. Shouldn't overheat though if you're on Armbian. I wouldn't recommend using any other distro on Oranges. Personally, I think the two worth considering are the 10 dollar One and the 15 dollar PC. My home server is an OPi One clocked at 480MHz, works just fine.

>>815429

They're overpriced and so are these. Would an Alienware reference be more up your alley?

>>815429

Better them than Sony

>>815442

They are expensive, but well built machines. Calling them 'overpriced' is like a McDonald's employee saying Porshe is over priced, he was never the target market anyway so even if they are it's an irrelevant statement.

>>815843

I don't think how you could call anything that sports a ULV CPU "well built", it's got planned obsolescence written all over it.

>>815862

*don't know how

>>807840

Pinebook has a Mali GPU and thus a proprietary out-of-tree GPU driver or raw framebuffer.

>>815866

pinebook is also basically a pi in a laptop case performance wise, and plays video poorly according to people on jewtube (lot of buffering, bad audio)

>>815862

Maybe, but what are you doing that would require the next gen CPU anyway?

I guarantee all your needs will be met.

>>816745

Your next line will be "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear"

>>807767 (OP)

I've had a chance to visually inspect one of their older revisions of Librem 15.

The display backlight seems to use PWM and with low frequency which is visible and hurting eyes.

I asked on the official website but they refused to tell if they will be using PWM in the future revisions.

Looks like this is not an alternative to Apple laptops yet.

>>807793

with non-critical ME modules removed and the killswitch activated it's basically already botnet-free

>>807840

At this point Intel is your best bet since there's no work being done on disabling the whole PSP / TrustZone thing on the AMD side

>>815299

The pinebook has something similar to ME I think

>>807853

You can also use an OEM flash tool, manually set the HAP bit in the bios payload and pray it'll work (it'll 100% not work if you use UEFI boot because the tool will try to update the firmware through an UEFI capsule, which is cryptographically signed)

>>825224

if your laptop doesn't have boot guard enabled