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Librem: a Laptop Custom-Made For Free/Libre Software
Bunnie Huang's Novena laptop re-invents the laptop with open source (and Free software) in mind, but the hackability that it's built for requires a fair amount of tolerance on a user's part for funky design and visible guts. New submitter dopeghost writes with word of the nearly-funded (via Crowd Supply) Librem laptop, a different kind of Free-software machine using components "specifically selected so that no binary blobs are needed in the Linux kernel that ships with the laptop." Made from high quality components and featuring a MacBook-like design including a choice of HiDPI screen, the Librem might just be the first laptop to ship with a modern Intel CPU that is not locked down to require proprietary firmware.
Richard M. Stallman, president of the FSF, said, "Getting rid of the signature checking is an important step. While it doesn't give us free code for the firmware, it means that users will really have control of the firmware once we get free code for it." Unlike some crowdfunding projects, this one is far from pie-in-the-sky, relying mostly on off-the-shelf components, with a planned shipping date in Spring of this year: "Purism is manufacturing the motherboard, and screen printing the keyboard. Purism is sourcing the case, daughter cards, memory, drives, battery, camera, and screen."
Richard M. Stallman, president of the FSF, said, "Getting rid of the signature checking is an important step. While it doesn't give us free code for the firmware, it means that users will really have control of the firmware once we get free code for it." Unlike some crowdfunding projects, this one is far from pie-in-the-sky, relying mostly on off-the-shelf components, with a planned shipping date in Spring of this year: "Purism is manufacturing the motherboard, and screen printing the keyboard. Purism is sourcing the case, daughter cards, memory, drives, battery, camera, and screen."
I definitely want one. The NSA is workig to be in the BIOS / radio firmware etc., but this is a very good first step, besides looking gorgeous with a replaceable battery and a DVD drive...take me there.
I'd like to see more detailed specs than what's listed on the website. Which chipsets is it using?
This is based on a 4 Core (8 Threads) 3.4GHz Intel i7-4770HQ. So has Intel released the HDL model of that CPU for these Librem guys, in case they wish to change anything inside it? B'cos they make big claims about the kernel, OS, software, freedom and privacy, so it would be interesting to see if they go all the way. Heck, they should start it right from the bottom - make a GPLv3 based CPU (whose HDL models are all publicly available). It would probably have to be a VLIW CPU or something, in order to force the source code to be always available. Not an x86 or an ARM.
15.6" display in either 1920x1080 or 3840x2160
4 Core (8 Threads) 3.4GHz Intel i7-4770HQ
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200
375 x 244 x 22mm 2.0Kg
14 x 9.6 x 0.86" 4.4lbs
4GB Mem (up to 32GB)
500GB HD (up to 1TB HD or 1TB SSD)
CD/DVD ROM Drive (or extra drive bay)
48 Wh lithium polymer battery
65W power adapter
Up to 8 hours usage
Three USB 3.0 ports
One HDMI port
One Pop-Down RJ45 Network port (r8169)
802.11n WiFi (ath9k)
720p camera
HD Audio
Mini-TOSLINK optical fiber connector
Full-size keyboard in a variety of languages
Aluminum enclosure body
SDXC card slot
Purism GNU/Linux 64-bit Operating System (Trisquel based)
375mm x 244mm x 22mm (14" x 9.6" x 0.86")
2.0kg (4.4lbs)
it is ridiculously expensive, over 2k for the most generic components on the market today.
I wonder whether it tops his Lemote Yeedong?
Why the hate? Looks like a great piece of hardware and one that does not hide every important spec behind NDA for no reason. I care and am sending them my money.
Mr. Stallman, is that you?
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
SDXC card slot
How will that work? The SDXC spec requires the use of ExFAT operating system, which is patented software. Or will these laptops not be available in Slashdot's home country?
You have to take steps to make progress. You can take something useful and make it more open (like librem) or you could start from scratch and make something very basic that is completely open.
You can take bigger strides towards openness and get something like Novena, but then you make other sacrifices (size, cost, performance).
I guess if you had infinite money you could make a high spec, completely opensource laptop.
that laptop was stolen in South America. He now uses a Thinkpad X60 flashed with Coreboot
Yeah, and I see they also advertise SDXC slot. The same thing Jolla chose to abandon on their tablet due to requiring a license from Microsoft.
To say you have a SDXC slot means you need to support exFAT and for that you need a license. If you do not support exFAT, you cannot brand it as SDXC.
after the sort of prayer you use when things hit the fan?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If Snowden's revelations haven't gotten you to care about software freedom, I guess nothing will.
Mr Stallman interestingly isn't a huge proponent of open hardware. As long as it's not locked down, so he can run whatever he wants on it, then he's satisfied.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If Samsung is sued because their tablets are too similar to iPads, I have a hard time believing that they won't get sued over their MacBook style design...
Decode your health
The touchpad - I've had issues w/ it even under Windows, so I dread what it might be under Trisquel. In my PC-BSD laptop, even though the trackpad is there, PC-BSD doesn't recognize it, which is good, and I've attached a separate mouse. Last thing I need is my palm touch to disorient the cursor when I am typing. I know that touchfreeze is FOSS, but even in Windows, I've had trouble w/ it at times.
Where they will backdoor your USB controller or PCI bridge. Nice try, neckbeards.
He switched? Didn't try to get another from Lemote?
Yeah, I'm sure that the NSA has legions of assembly language programers who infiltrate every part of a system - BIOS, kernel, OS, DEs and everything else around it!
Most CAD applications are usable only with two-button mice and trackpads - although 3 button mice and trackpads are better.
(besides, I personally prefer the tackpoint (AKA "clit") to the trackpad, but I can't even hope to have such open-source laptop to have that option - that's asking too much, I guess)
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
My point precisely, in response to Flavianoep. RMS calls those 'circuits', but the advocacy that he does applies to those as well. What if one doesn't like something about the i7 and wishes to change it? He'd need the HDL models to even start. (Of course, it's another thing that he'd need a relationship w/ a fab to even do this). My point is that RMS is fanatical about liberating software, while looking the other way on hardware. Even while he bitches about TiVoization.
When things hit the fan, at least it will be relatively easy to clean out.
Kudos to them for making the fan semi-easily accessible. You have to remove the entire back panel - but that seems to apply for access to HDD and RAM as well anyway. Hopefully it tilts and slides right away from the fins as well and you don't have to unscrew and lift those off (potentially putting stress on the CPU/GPU).
( Also yay for keeping the speakers away from the top / not using a fine mesh grille that just gets gunked up with dust. )
Is that really important? I chose all the options to match a macbook pro retina and it was good that this model was about 400$ cheaper. However, the apple hardware includes the Geforce, which I guess you can't get away without a binary blob, hence not included. If you aren't looking at video intensive apps this looks really sweet, just max it out and wait a few years more before buying new hardware.
Even if you wanted to change something in the processor, who would you get to manufacture it. This is a 22 nm chip. Not something that any fab in the world can produce. You can change the design all you want, but you're going to be at the mercy of Intel, or perhaps a couple other large multinational corporations to get the thing made.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
You do realize why that is, right?
Hint: where does the FSF get the majority of its funding from?
Please help metamoderate.
Oh, I see, you think Stallman should care about open hardware.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
... And may I see it's source code & compiler?
"One Pop-Down RJ45 Network port" ??? Pop-down? Does that mean it isn't just a normal port you plug in, but is one of those spring loaded ports that pop out? Ya'know, the things horrible notorious for breaking?
I guess it doesn't matter. Googled the chipset, first result: "Realtek r8169 not working in CentOS" - Sounds good to me!
"Three USB 3.0 ports" - I would seriously pay MORE for more USB ports, even if they are 2.0 ports. I hate having to travel with a USB hub just because manufactures don't want to shove out more than 3 ports these days. At least desktops are better in that they generally ship with 10+ now right on the back of the motherboard, before adding the USB headers for front devices.
"802.11n WiFi (ath9k)" - Doesn't say if it is 2.4GHz only or 5GHz compatible, or if it is multi-channel or not.
So, it is a cool concept, I guess, but I think things need to be tweeked a tad to be more universally usable.
If they were going for free wouldn't DisplyPort have been a better option? I mean HDMI is at its roots video DRM. With DisplyPort you can opt to output to almost every modern video connection available including HDMI.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
...cheapest model is $1650....comparable other laptops are cheaper.
not worth bothering.
If he is consistent, yeah!!! Why should only the software vendors be target of his demonstrations? Speaking for myself, I'm supportive of the BSDL model - provide the free open source software, but don't try to force it down the chain. But since Stallman supports copyleft, it should be there for both hardware (the HDL models) and software.
What if one doesn't like something about the i7 and wishes to change it?
Then one is fucked unless one has a state of the art chip fabrication plant. Are you fucking retarded?
In theory, you can use the Linux extended file system (Ext2-4) on removable media. But it shares one drawback with NTFS: user IDs generally don't match from one machine to another. So when you mount a file system on another machine, you won't have privileges to read or write files. FAT, by contrast, doesn't store owner or group IDs, instead assuming that all files belong to the user who mounted the file system. UDF supports the same feature, reserving UID -1 to mean "bearer" in this sense. UDF works on SDXC cards, but I was under the impression that any licensed SDXC writer had to support exFAT.
Stolen? It was FREE!
Copyright (c) 1990 - 2014 Dice. All rights reserved. Use of this comment is subject to certain Terms and Conditions.
Before I get modded to oblivion... From TFA: In addition to enabling as above the development of free BIOS firmware, we are also working with Intel to allow us to scrub, release, and maintain the source for the FSP, but havenÃ(TM)t finalized that yet. We are devoted to freeing this binary. You can read here about the current state of our efforts to free the BIOS. (http://puri.sm/posts/bios-freedom-status/) The point I was trying to make is that UNTIL every layer of the operational stack really is Free & Open Source, the product as a whole isn't REALLY libre.
This is useless for me without TB2 on Skylake, and/or a decent GPU. Otherwise great gear.
Freed from the owner. RMS once wrote an essay 'Why software should not have owners'. The thief in this case shared RMS' idea w/ a twist - 'Why computers should not have owners' ;-)
Some key specs on this thing:
3.4GHz Intel i7-4770HQ
Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200
375 x 244 x 22mm 2.0Kg
14 x 9.6 x 0.86" 4.4lbs
48 Wh lithium polymer battery
Up to 8 hours usage
That battery life is a pipe dream. The Macbook Pro 15 (which is much better optimized for battery life than Windows) w/o discrete graphics gets 8 hours under light use on the same CPU using a 95 Wh battery. This thing is more likely to get 4 hours best case, probably closer to 2-3 hours since most open source software won't be optimized for power savings on this exact hardware. (Yes I've tested this, when I put together my NAS/VM server. I plugged it into a Kill-a-Watt and measured power draw from a variety of OSes. Windows came in best at 30 Watts idle. The best default install of a Linux distro was 35 Watts idle. The worst 55 Watts idle. All were right around 105 Watts under load.)
Most of the Windows laptops with an quad core i7 (without Iris Pro graphics) managing 4 hours under light use have a 60+ Wh battery. The two with 52/54 Wh batteries (Lenovo Y50, MSI GS60) come in at 3-4 hours battery life in reviews. An 8 hour battery life in this thing is going to be attainable only in the useless "I leave the laptop sitting there powered on, but doing nothing" case (where BTW the MBP 15 hits 14 hours due to its gargantuan battery, and the 60+ Wh Windows laptops manage about 8 hours).
Which brings us to the weight. Given the short battery life, why not increase the weight to put in a bigger battery? Obviously they're trying to match the Macbook Pro 15. But if you can't match it, sacrificing battery size to keep the weight low is probably the worst compromise you can make. As it is, this thing is going to be an super-light (for a 15" notebook) ultra-portable laptop that has to sit on the desk plugged into AC power most of the time. People who buy ultra-portable laptops buy them so they can take it with them and use it away from the desk and power outlet. People who don't mind short battery life don't mind it because their laptop usually sits on a desk plugged into AC power, and thus weight doesn't matter as much. Pick one or the other.
They don't need legions, and they have *lots* of cash to buy the ones at the source.
But if software can enslave us (thus the need for software "freedom"), isn't hardware even more of a concern? After all, how do we know that any proprietary hardware gizmo is doing what it's supposed to, and hasn't been hijacked by any of the various boogeymen like the NSA that folks here love to demonize?
For example, imagine a computer that ostensibly protected our freedom via "the GNU/Linux system", yet secretly booted something we didn't actually have the source code to?
(Go ahead and mod this reductio ad absurdum argument as a troll. I know that there's nothing the software freedom crowd hates so much as somebody who exercises their freedom to voice a contrary opinion...)
The same argument applies to software - how many people are programmers who'd know how to change the kernel, or the device drivers, or other things in the computer beyond what can be easily accessed under settings in any application? How many people can go in and remove systemd from their Linux copy, if they don't like it? Or get Razor-qt working under NetBSD, or get a WiFi driver working? Unless one is one of the people who built the OS, not many. Yet, we have RMS campaigning aggressively for liberated software, like that would do any good to the public at large, which is typically non-technical and for whom, changing such things would be like having to tweak an i7
BTW, why is the creation of a "free" BIOS a problem that nobody has solved yet? Is it really that hard? Just curious.
The main cost in developing a laptop is the high cost of tooling for the injection molding. http://openlunchbox.com/ plans on rapidly printing laptop cases to get around this problem and making all the main components as modules. SLA resolution is in the sub-100 micron range vs well over 100 micron for FDM. It's also an order or two of magnitude faster.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
The GPL is the only license practically that lets you dual-license with a proprietary license.
You can give it freely to people who want to spread it freely, and you can charge people who want to close it. That way, you get a return on your investment either way.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I don't know actually, where? Intel?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's totally do-able! I mean, giant OEMs do that! .. don't they?
Noble goal, hopefully something is released before the hardware goes out of date. Or Apple sues their ass for design trademark infringement.
Actually, this is a good point. What if the evillll bogeyman the NSA, knowing that these type of systems can be made, decided to get Intel to embed some spyware within the CPU itself, so that even a workstation that has Coreboot and Trisquel and emacs cannot escape it? That's where it would be just as theoretically useful for a CPU's HDL models to be published, so that anyone who can determine such intrusive sections of the CPU can approach, let's say, a much smaller fab, get it removed, albeit compromising on the specs, like a lower frequency, fatter die (due to larger process nodes), and some more? I'd imagine that this is as possible as the NSA embedding spyware into UEFI, the kernels of the various closed source OSs, the windowing systems and so on.
yum install exfat-utils fuse-exfat
For others trying this: exfat-utils and fuse-exfat are in RPM Fusion because patent issues block their inclusion with Fedora.
You assume more restrictions than what is actually available or possible.
I agree that there is no technical restriction. But political restrictions can still be relevant, especially when it comes to bringing the required parts through United States customs. The MGM v. Grokster decision enshrined secondary liability through inducement in U.S. case law, and including the SDXC marking could be seen as inducement to infringe a patent by installing the exFAT packages.
What's the state of Coreboot?
But since Stallman supports copyleft, it should be there for both hardware (the HDL models) and software.
I don't think you get to decide what other people "should" believe or care about.
I mentioned that - he'd need a relationship w/ a fab to even start this
That's the point exactly. The barriers to tinkering with hardware are technical.
The barriers to tinkering with software are purely political.
Someone who's the second user of one computer and the first user of another computer would encounter such a UID mismatch when trying to sneakernet large files between the two. UDF works around this by reserving a UID to mean "bearer".
You can replace the SSD in the current Macbook Pro: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/M...
I suppose you could in theory upgrade the RAM though, but I don't count any Mac upgrade solution that requires re-soldering anything.
Just yesterday I was reading about the Novena and a couple of similar and related projects. It struck me that all of these projects are tackiling this from the ground up. It seems to me that more people could contribute if different projects could focus on separate modules. That way I could maybe buy an open hardware video adapter to fix a laptop screen. Or an open hardware disk controller to restore a burnt HDD controller. Having open hardware components available would make it cheaper to repair computers. I'd love to be able to stock a single drive controller card and flash the firmware to match the drive it's controlling. Right now I have a complete laptop with a broken hinge and damaged power port. I'd love to be able to take all the parts out and put them into an aftermarket case. I don't mean a replacement case from the original model. I mean a standardized case that would allow me to swap out parts. Why does no such case exist? Why do I have to order an exact match when the case is just molded plastic and each component is pretty much the same size and shape?
I do not block ads. I do block third party scripts.
it does good to have systems that are public. open and free peering of qualified individuals can give a society a far better chance at influence and awareness. this already sort of works for sw, but then writing sw involves basically a brain, time, a computer and network access. it would work for chip production too if you somehow sort out the practical implications. currently only megacorps can do that so i'd say it falls out of the current scope. but there's really no need to build a free communal hi-tech production system. once we have enough mass (of people caring about stuff being nice and open) megacorps will listen. sw is the spearhead. :-)
I think you're missing the point....
What was wrong with standard Linux distributions such as Debian / Ubuntu / whatever?
Or will it only run GNU/Linux?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Donations?
You have to take steps to make progress. You can take something useful and make it more open (like librem) or you could start from scratch and make something very basic that is completely open.
This. Stallman himself took the former, more pragmatic approach when he began Gnu. He started with an existing proprietary Unix system (Sun OS?) and used it to develop parts of Gnu, with the goal of replacing the entire OS eventually with Gnu.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Are you that dense? We already know of them trying to sabotage security. They simply have lots and lots of money.
Skylake? really? it's useless because it doesn't use a processor that hasn't even launched? I can understand the thunderbolt and the gpu but really to complain about the lack of a processor that doesn't exist is truly nitpicking to the extreme. especially one that may be delayed.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Better build quality? you know this how?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
But using my signature.
I want secure boot from beginning to desktop, with the knowledge that the NSA has not dicked with my computer beyond its initial state.
If Snowden's revelations haven't gotten you to care about software freedom, I guess nothing will.
How is software freedom going to stop them from intercepting all that traffic over the web? Having direct access to user machines just isn't necessary when everybody is transmitting over the open web anyway.
Software freedom also doesnt help you when (as we have seen) the hardware is tampered with in transit.
Software freedom is great but we have seen its reputation tarnished before with people evangelizing it based on these false benefits, it is not the answer to the NSA (or whomever) spying. The same thing happened when people said free software is the key to innovation and ultimately there has been almost nothing to speak of, in almost all cases just a slow-follower copying proprietary products.
This isn't an indictment of free software or open source but please do not sink to the level of trying to lure people in with lies, it has real advantages so concentrate on evangelizing those rather than imagined ones.
What does frequent contributor Bennett Hasleton think of this laptop?
Does it run Windows?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Here you go: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/systems/opensparc/index.html. Not HDL, or even the CPU: https://github.com/open-power. Free graphics is another thing, but wasn't there a GPL FPGA based display controller somewhere?
That's not really the point, the main issue is that for all the pontification about how FOSS is more secure because you can see the code the fact is it is ultimately running on closed proprietary hardware, locking all the windows but leaving the doors open makes you a bit more secure but it's only an illusion of security, and that is even worse.
You have to take steps to make progress. You can take something useful and make it more open (like librem) or you could start from scratch and make something very basic that is completely open.
You can take bigger strides towards openness and get something like Novena, but then you make other sacrifices (size, cost, performance).
I guess if you had infinite money you could make a high spec, completely opensource laptop.
interesting that you should say this :) i am taking a different approach. i am also developing a laptop where the goal is to reach FSF-Endorseability *and* high-end specs. i am doing it one phase at a time, as you suggest... however where instead of having infinite money i am instead using creativity and ingenuity (posh words for "persistent bloody-mindedness combined with desperation stroke eye-popping frustration").
sooo, i decided to go the "modular" route, but had to first create a decent hardware standard - one that will still be here in 10 years time but is simple enough for the average person (or a 5-year-old, or an 80-year-old) to use. it's based on an old "Memory Card" standard - you may have heard how PCMCIA is no longer being used? well, the case-work is still around :) so, re-using PCMCIA it is. and all the benefits of "Memory Card", you now get "Computer Card".. upgradeable, swappable, saleable, transferrable, storable "Computer" Card. ... but then, of course, because of that, yaay, you now have to design entirely new casework, not just a motherboard. talking to casework suppliers didn't um go so well, so i have to do it. bought a mendel90 6 months ago... ... but mendel90's don't do injection-moulded plastics, they do 3d-printed filament plastics. and when presented with a potential $USD 20,000 cost for creating injection-moulding (you send your STL files off, someone adapts them, CNCs out two steel halves and then a little *team* of chinese people sit there for weeks on end polishing out all the CNC burrs.... then you find out it's *completely wrong* and have *another* $USD 20,000 to pay... no wonder ODMs quote $USD 250,000 for developing laptops!!!) ... anyway so that's all completely insane, so i thought, "hmm, i wonder if you can create reverse-3d-printed moulds to do injection-mould prototyping" and it turns out that you can. so i could at least - on a low budget - make a few runs out of very-low-temperature plastic (so as not to burst the 3d-printed plastic under pressure), hell i could even use plasticine for goodness sake, just to get a proof-of-concept, *then*.... and this is the hilarious bit.... there's a girl who's been doing LostPLA home-grown aluminium casting.... *using 1500W microwave ovens* :)
http://media.ccc.de/browse/con...
so in theory i could quite conceivably even try doing the casting of the inverse-moulds for plastic injection *myself*, out of landfill-designated aluminium bicycle rims. do watch that talk: julia is surprisingly subtly funny, there were lots of jokes that the audience didn't get (not a native english speaking audience), and a few later that they did.
bottom line it *can* be done... if you make the decision, and damn well stick at it until success. if you're interested to follow along, here's the links:
* micro-desktop (launching very soon) which has the first EOMA68 module: https://www.crowdsupply.com/eo...
* the 7in tablet (due to go to assembly this week) http://rhombus-tech.net/commun...
* the 15.6in laptop (currently developing the casework) http://rhombus-tech.net/commun...
on the laptop - as yo
Coreboot is fine, but FSP is still required so it isn't "free".
Because I have eyes and because I can read. Give it a try some time.
The person behind this is a moron. They're claiming based on a trade show that Intel “might” cooperate when Intel's repeatedly refused. Talking to a rep at a trade show isn't the same thing as getting Intel's cooperation. Google failed, the coreboot developers failed, and so have many others. There is no reason to think Intel's going to change its mind for this insignificant project.
It also had to be explained to the guy behind this why going with NVIDIA graphics was hypocritical to the stated goal of a completely free software laptop (this originally had NVIDIA graphics and they changed it halfway through). The specific NVIDIA chip didn't even have rudimentary support by the nouveau driver.
There are other projects in the works that look a lot more promising and interesting for those who care about free software. The most promising of which I'll refrain from leaking- but there are other potential candidates and people working toward systems that really are going to be more free software friendly than whats available today. They may not be as powerful, but if what your after is freedom, privacy, etc, then they're the real deal. This isn't.
This is based on a 4 Core (8 Threads) 3.4GHz Intel i7-4770HQ
The 4770HQ runs at 2.2GHz. The falsely advertised 3.4GHz clockspeed is only for turbo boost.
it's useless because it doesn't use a processor that hasn't even launched?
It's useless for me. What am I supposed to do with a friggin Iris? Fuck that, I want a real numbercruncher, even if I have to wait.
So, I'm not complaining, they've got a great lappy, just not quite what I imagined for myself, so I'll hold out.
I can't find the link, but there was something about TB2 not being connected directly to the CP lanes.
Ah, there it is:
Intel has never allowed motherboard vendors to hang the Thunderbolt silicon / add-in card off the CPU's PCIe lanes. [...] It would have been great to have a new version of Thunderbolt with PCIe 3.0 along with the X99 launch. But, we already know it is not going to be the case till Skylake launches.
From: http://www.anandtech.com/show/...
So that seems the single most important update we've had in years, IMHO.
Hopefully I'll be able to get myself something like a WS 60, but with proper TB support that will be able to run OS X. I.e. metal case, two drive bays, lots of RAM, TB2-3, USB 3(.1), and a quadra or the like.
I'm willing to accept binary blobs on my 'puter for such specs, since I have a Free router that does the network filtering anyway.
In any case, they got pretty close to what I want except for the TB and the GPU. I might get one of these for my wife in order to support them.
Not really. Imagine if someone did have the money, or owned a 20nm fab, and was perfectly capable of starting a lot on his own. He'd still not be able to whip up an i7, since the netlists and HDL models are Intel proprietary, and not something open, such as OpenCores' OpenRISC CPU.
This is not a problem, but neither is unliberated software. Open Source for an end user is only useful if the user happens to be a programmer who understands it all inside out.
I don't. I just expect consistency from them.
Wow. Someone who thinks RMS is not unreasonable enough about open systems!
Of course it's all just tediously boring strawman construction instead of an honest belief but hopefully you are having fun even if it's boring to watch.
So you are attaching an idea to something ridiculous in order to make the idea look ridiculous? Don't you have some other sort of hobby you could be doing instead of insulting our intelligence?
Why not, you just did.
The GPL is the only license practically that lets you dual-license with a proprietary license.
You can give it freely to people who want to spread it freely, and you can charge people who want to close it. That way, you get a return on your investment either way.
Actually if you're the copyright holder for something you can license it in as many ways as you want. It doesn't make much sense if one of those options isn't GPL though.
I apologize for the lack of a signature.
Obviously. since the problem is solved, they should be sharing the details with the rest of the poor slobs on Slashdot who are at the mercy of the evil forces of closed proprietary systems.
For a start, none of them are running any Microsoft or Apple product, so no Windows or Mac Os. And they can't be using the latest generation of any CPU, since the NSA has already infiltrated those designs. To be really secure, they must be using something pre-Pentium II, like a 486 generation CPU, or maybe a Motorola 68000. And it can't have USB, since USB sticks are now known to be an attack vector. And they have ATA disks or SCSI and floppies for offline storage and VGA adapters with VGA analog output. Because if they don't go go really old school, how can the be really sure that they aren't under the thumb of The Man?
Yes, all the whiners are running really old gear, because if they weren't they would be horrible hypocrites, and none of them would do that ever, right?
Why is Snark Required?
Yeah. That's why I qualified it with the word 'practically.'
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
He'd need the HDL models to even start. (Of course, it's another thing that he'd need a relationship w/ a fab to even do this).
This is simply not true.
I work as an EE designing chips, and 90+% of it is writing Verilog (or VHDL) or some high level synthesis language like Bluespec. There are existing and high performance RISC CPUs, including RISC-V (Rocket core, from Berkeley EECS), Sun T1 and T2, and others. RISC-V for one outperforms ARM A5 by 10% in half the area.
You don't design (digital) chips by drawing wires and transistors; you write a bunch of EDL (and test suites), test it thoroughly with test cases, simulations and FPGAs, then hand it off to the *one* guy in the company who has a Cadence or Mentor license to do the final synthesis with the process package from your fab (which anyone willing to sign an NDA and look serious can get).
The problem is that the process from synthesis to finished chip requires a maskset, which is a stack of physical objects vaguely resembling a slide deck (if you know what old school film slide projectors are), and that set can cost anywhere from $10k for a really mature process (0.3um) to $5M for a complex state of the art process (14nm). Once your fab has that, making the individual chips is quite cheap (assuming you can afford to pay for 10k+ chips up front).
So yea, if you know what you're doing you can design the next killer chip alone in your parent's basement without any secret sauce or NDAs or even any substantial spending (you can get Cadence or Mentor from many a warez repo, if you're that way inclined). Getting it manufactured is a much more expensive proposition, but if you can raise the VC to pay for the MOQ from a fab, even the mask costs are not impossible.
And for an example of someone actually doing this: look at lowrisc.org, those are some of the guys behind RPi, and responding to RPi not really being open (at all, but hey, whatever), are developing a completely open SoC based on Rocket core and RISC-V.
Thanks, that's interesting stuff.
I never said that! I said that he's not consistent in his ideology. I do think that he's unreasonably fanatical about liberated software, and that both the current Linux (GPL2) and BSD (BSDL) models are good enough. But since he wrote the standard on being uncompromising - even dumping on standard Linux distros on the GNU page, I brought up the question about hardware, where exactly the same arguments can be used.
You are right - there is that, and there is also OpenCores' OpenRISC CPU. However, if one wanted to make an i7, even if one could do the EDL and test vectors, one would still require a patent license from Intel to make this. My larger point above was that Librem made their laptop from an off the shelf Intel part, instead of looking at these sort of alternatives. Which is fine, but then the high horse that they mounted about being pure Libre just sounds disingenuous
That's what it requires of cards. I thought it also required devices to be able to read and (if appropriate) write cards formatted in exFAT, that the user would not be required to reformat a card in order to use the data stored on the card.
Nothing stops you from bundling a SDXC controller in hardware without the software support for exFAT.
Except possibly the patents on the Secure Digital card format itself.
Probably are backdoors in the intel firmware mandated by a nsl
In other words, the defense to patent infringement would be exhaustion of exclusive rights after first sale. Then the most viable cause of action shifts to trademark infringement: can Purism legally claim that its assembled product is fully compatible with SDXC?
So is your free router configured to filter all encrypted outgoing data?
P.S I am willing to accept binary blobs on my machine too, but i don't fool myself.
Then read this
Bridge for sale, totally genuine. You have eyes? here is a picture http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...
Open Source can be valuable to a non-technical user, because any good programmer can be hired to do whatever to id. Open Source/Free software is usually manipulable by a software person with a reasonable computer, which the software person probably already owns. Open Source/Free hardware is manipulable by somebody with access to a 22nm fab. There's a difference here.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Having looked at the URL for the crowd supply, there are no options for a version of Librem that has a power adapter other than US/UK/EU.
How about including all the rest of the English speaking world by having options for all the standard mains power plugs in use in the English speaking world?
It looks very sleek apple like. I couldn't see the battery when they took the back off. If you have to take the back off to change the battery there might be a warranty issue.
Even though I disagree with RMS on many points I have to admit that his views on one issue are not necessarily the same as on a different issue.
I suggest you address reality, which is bad enough, before indulging in pointless strawman construction which will get nothing done apart from vigourous public massaging of ego. He really does not appear to give a shit about hardware no matter what you would like him to think and how you would like to link issues together.
I really don't get why you are making such a big deal about what is really MIT staffroom politics that has escaped onto the net. Hardware is not his thing. He doesn't care about code burnt into eproms etc. Get over it and stop trying to put words into the mouth of someone who doesn't seem to care about the issue.
Better specs? Does it come with free/open firmware? With no un-replaceable hard-coded bootloader crypto-keys? With hardware that has free software drivers and does not need proprietary firmware blobs? If it does not, it does not have "better specs" according to the Librem's primary concern: "A Free/Libre Software Laptop That Respects Your Essential Freedoms".
Somebody who makes such a big deal over TiVo that he coined a term out of it - 'TiVoization' - which is simply locking a flash memory in which the set top box firmware is embedded - doesn't sound like someone who's agnostic about hardware. I'd have granted your point about that had Tivoization not been a big reason for GPLv3.
Applying a bit of the specific to the general there but you do have a point. However in general terms he does not appear to give a shit even though the tivo got his attention.
I consider it's a bit misleading to say what attitude somebody should have while ignoring what they have stated at length. You may see it as being for a noble purpose but it's still strawman construction.