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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."
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)
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.
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 what we are working on now. http://openlunchbox.com/
Standard modules that anyone can make and cases printed on demand.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur