Among other things. My first question was, is the hardware open? Couldn't find an answer to that.
Edit: Apparently revision 2 of Purism will possibly have Coreboot.
http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2015/1...
The graphics chip needs proprietary, binary firmware blobs.
The ethernet chip needs proprietary, binary firmware blobs.
The BIOS is a proprietary, binary firmware blob.
"Respects your freedom" my ass. The only difference to a whitebox laptop is marketing. Dell's or Lenovo's linux offerings are just as "free".
(And chromebooks with Coreboot are, technically, more free than both.)
The figures were about 1500 CPU-seconds for the desktop and 3000 CPU-seconds for the Chromebook. Of course, wall-clock time was significantly less for the desktop due to having many more cores, but that's showing that per-core, the high-end Intel was only about twice as fast as the ARM.
I do development work on the Chromebook, via a Debian chroot inside Crouton. And you know what? It's fine. It's probably the fastest laptop I've ever owned. The filesystem's a little slow, but compilation speeds are perfectly adequate.
I wonder why Purism didn't simply commission such a machine with the right 3D chip instead of going with a non-free and expensive option.
I would also love similar initiatives in the mobile space, but I reckon it is more challenging. Neo900 and Pyra are kind of cool though. And I'm hoping Jolla open sources Sailfish OS later this month or early new year.
Because they can sell the "expensive" option (which, for the OEM itself, isn't even too expensive) at a much higher premium.
> I would also love similar initiatives in the mobile space, but I reckon it is more challenging.
In the mobile space it would be an even bigger exercise in futility: There is no, and will never be, a baseband chip with a free firmware. The FCC made that pretty clear back in the OpenMoko days – use our NSA-approved proprietary blob or you'll never sell in the developed world.
Only after enough users is involved in freedom seeking, it can be possible to demand large companies to provide something we need. In my opinion, Purism do a lot in this direction.
Render Time:
Photon Time: 0 hours 0 minutes 1 seconds (1.256 seconds)
using 11 thread(s) with 1.456 CPU-seconds total
Radiosity Time: No radiosity
Trace Time: 0 hours 2 minutes 18 seconds (138.426 seconds)
using 8 thread(s) with 1099.214 CPU-seconds total
I would be very surprised if the Chromebook's 1.8GHz Cortex-A17 was only 3x slower. Googling around, I see people mentioning numbers like 10,000 CPU-seconds.
Would it make a difference if the chipset being used was already used for a cellphone that was FCC certified? If I put DD-WRT on my router, do I need to re-apply for FCC certification? (Wondering)
Well, also the wifi requires a blob, but one can use small usb adapters sanctioned by FSF, and blobfree.
For Wifi it's surprisingly strict:
• Every antenna+transmitter configuration has to be certified separately (that's why Lenovo and other laptop vendors have Wifi card whitelists and refuse booting with uncertified chips installed).
• The software that directly drives the hardware must be certified to conform to the transmission power limits etc.
For DD-WRT and others neither is a problem, because the hardware combination has been certified by the router vendor, and DD-WRT uses the wifi chip vendor's firmware blob to drive the hardware, which is certified by the vendor.
Since they're not at all transparent on the details about how they will actually achieve true Freedom on modern hardware, and since modern hardware IP is deeply entangled in patent and licensing issues, it's reasonable to be high skeptical of what's going on here.
Then again it can all be a scam which would render anything I just said irrelevant anyway.
Try a native install on the Flip, it is nice: http://kmkeen.com/c100p-tweaks/
Are you sure about that? The fact that not every vendor has such a lock suggests to me that there is no legal requirement for it.
E.g., If you're worried about the police monitoring your communications, giving them a perfectly legal reason to detain you is likely not your preferred course of action.
If you're a person of interest, the police can come up with a better reason to detain you than this.
However it may be that other, less Constitutionally-constrained parties would have the ability to dragnet for nonstandard firmware to highlight people for more intense scrutiny. The police could use a parallel construction based on that. Then they could say that unauthorized firmware on a seized phone establishes some sort of criminal intent.
* OsmocomBB (http://bb.osmocom.org/trac/)
* An old HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7064187
* OKL4, a hypervisor, is used widely in basebands. AFAICT It was developed by Open Kernel Labs and was open. It seems to have been acquired by General Dynamics and I don't know it's current status (does anyone know more about it?) (https://gdmissionsystems.com/cyber/products/trusted-computin...)
* GTA04 by OpenPhoenux (http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/)
* Neo900 (http://neo900.org/)
* QTMoko (http://qtmoko.sourceforge.net/)
* SHR (http://shr-project.org/)
> The C100P Flip is the best netbook I have seen in eight years.
That's quite the praise! This thing must be really good.
> The default ALSA config was completely silent. Enabling Right Speaker Mixer Right/Left DAC fixed that. Supposedly there is a risk of burning out the amp if you thoughtlessly enable every option.
Uhh... wow. Well, OK.
> After suspend/resume, wifi will not work if the btsdio module was automatically loaded.
The best netbook in eight years, yet it can't even suspend/resume properly? What?
> The best video output mode is X11 video output. Despite what everyone says about being slow, this is the only driver that doesn't have major desync problems.
> Stellarium would run at a buttery smooth 60 FPS for a few minutes and then everything would die.
> Chromium will not run on this hardware.
> Screen rotation through xrandr doesn't work at all...
Then under "Things to Fix":
> - HMDI output. Very wonky, usually crashes X11 after a few minutes.
> - USB ethernet. The cdc_ether module will load but nothing happens.
> - Webcam. Crazy bucket of fail here. Maybe 25% of the time fswebcam can grab a single frame. Good luck with video.
> - Multitouch on the panel. No idea how to get that working.
To me, —even with the fixes and workarounds you describe— that device sounds like a nightmare to use.
8x i7-3770K: 1123 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 144 seconds)
4x Cortex A17: 3196 cpu-seconds (wall-clock: 963 seconds)
I just wish it had more cores, but I suspect that Rockchip are raking in money from these things, and I expect we'll get more cores next year.
The 12x Xeon was my work machine. I might have to have a word with them about it.
And then if I want to use a real OS, I switch to my fullscreen Debian installation running awesome and all my xterms and it all just seamlessly interoperates. Except I don't need NetworkManager or PulseAudio or any of that nonsense because ChromeOS does it all for me. The brightness buttons work! The audio volume buttons work! Suspend and resume works! Everything works! There's even two-way clipboard support! Which works!
I've been using Linux for years, and I think this is the first time I have ever had a Linux-based laptop where all this stuff wasn't a total PITA.
Everything else comes down to software. Some of the difficulties were because I prefer to do things a difficult way. Eg, Arch is going to require more configuration and sound Just Works if you use Pulse. Having ALSA correctly autoconfigure everything except a single boolean flag is pretty good in my book. The warning about burning out hardware is just me passing on the advice from an engineer who actually works on these boards.
Suspend/resume is in fact flawless. It has never failed to come out of suspend, unlike quite a few thinkpads I've used. However linux does the wrong thing here with the bluetooth module. Trivial to fix, and it happens on other hardware too. Not the fault of the Flip.
Chromium doesn't run on Arch Linux ARM at all. Any hardware, regardless. So you can't hold that against the Flip. And I don't use Chromium, so this is a non-factor.
Almost everything else is the usual crap you have to put up with using garbage closed source video drivers and a kernel hacked out of ChromeOS. But I spend the majority of my time in the terminal, so the graphics are nothing I am concerned about. Similarly, I don't care about the webcam or multitouch, or HDMI because I don't own an HDMI monitor. I feel they are irrelevant details hardly worth mention, but they sound like dealbreakers to you.
Literally all I do is typing, reading, listening to music. I wanted fanless, all-day battery life, that weighs under a kilogram and is under $300. The Flip delivers and overall it has been a better experience than running Linux on a thinkpad. There are very few netbooks that could meet those requirements, and none that do it as elegantly as the Flip does. Therefor it is the best in my regard. If you disagree, it is up to you to name something superior according to the given criteria.
Linux boots in 6 seconds. Caps is mapped to Mod4/super, you already have a GIANT control key. Linux does not need NM or Pulse either. And the operating system is not in the middle of being axed by Google, so while updates are not automatic I don't have to worry about them stopping.
But the two biggest points: Linux gets you an extra five hours of battery life, and lets you configure charge limits so that the non-replacable battery won't rot away in three years.
And yes, it might be a scam. But might be not.
[0] (1) is being already done by FSF, but to me it looks like it's not enough.
I spend about 10 hours a day on my main computer. If I upgrade every 18 months, even a $1500 machine only costs 28 cents per hour. Set aside frustration with drivers or software bugs; expensive laptops win for purely economic reasons. If a $1500 laptop makes me even 10% more productive, it's worth buying. This is the case for practically anyone who works in tech.
My current laptop is a base model 12" MacBook. It is, without a doubt, my favorite computer ever. It's small. It's light. The screen is gorgeous. It resumes before I'm done opening the lid. It has an amazing trackpad, excellent battery life, and a wonderful keyboard. With current technology, it could scarcely be improved upon. I wish there was a combination of hardware and software that could compete with it, but so far, nothing I've seen has come close.
With regards to being able to buy more equipment: I do have a powerful rack-mount server in addition to my MacBook. But being able to buy five ordinary laptops for the price of an amazing one? That's not very relevant. I can only type on one keyboard at a time. If anything, more laptops would slow me down. I'd have to keep all of their software up-to-date, sync data between them, ensure their batteries were charged, etc.
Imagine making the same argument in other domains. For the price of one plane ticket, I could buy five Greyhound bus tickets to the same destination. For the price of one quality memory-foam mattress, I could buy five innerspring mattresses. For the price of one Aeron chair, I could buy five AmazonBasics office chairs. So what? I don't want more. I want better.
It is irresponsible to always buy the "best" when you should be looking for the best value per dollar. Your own bank account is zero-sum, be more effective with it.
But on every single other laptop I have ever used Linux on, there has always been something that hasn't worked properly, whether it's audio not waking up properly after a suspend, or occasionally suspend not actually working and I discover a red hot laptop in my bag spinning at 100% CPU, or some such issue.
Having a machine which I don't have to fiddle with to make work is a totally new experience for me.
We think that once you actually see and touch the Librem, hands on, you will find the hardware is even better than a MacBook in many ways.
The Librem is definitely much faster, and the screen quality is amazing. The feel is very sturdy.
The usability, look/feel of the amazing Mac OSX is harder to exceed but we are working on the UI and ease of use in our Linux-kernel-based PureOS. It's all a work in progress.
And one more thing -- we are structured more like an Open Source project than a traditional corporation, so we are able to iterate very very rapidly.
The Librem is really created with the feedback of the backers and the community. This is what makes it at the core, very different than any other computer.
"What is my data worth?"
What is your privacy worth?
What is it worth if even one time you have your identity stolen or tax return hacked, or your company's reputation is ruined by a data breach?