The Dangers of Microsoft Pluton

Regardless of all the FUD against Pluton, it has a great feature, it is yet another CPU with hardware memory tagging, as the last resort against C flaws and derived languages.

FUD is no longer FUD when it becomes a realistic danger.

Given that remote attestation already had deleterious effects for user freedoms on smartphones and tablets (meaning, choose between banking apps and any deviation from the factory ROM), Pluton should be seen as a danger.

Smartphones and tablets are electronic gadgets.

If you want a general purpose computer get a laptop.

Most likely one sold by Linux OEMs, like Tuxedo and System76.

That's an invalid argument for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that some people can afford just one device.

That device is likely to be a smartphone because everything is slowly moving in the direction of requiring one.

If I need to spend extra money to get an additional "freedom device" and can't afford it, I just won't have one and will miss out on the good stuff.

Welcome to the 8 and 16 bit home computer days when OSes were written in ROMs.

Librem 5 and Pinephone smartphones are general-purpose computers.

Up to the community to prove their have a market value to be kept around and aren't yet another OpenMoko.

That is precisely the proof I need before I ever buy into either. I'm very optimistic about PinePhone but AIUI it's currently quite far from being a reliable daily driver for the kinds of tasks I need one for.

Those OSes were distributed on ROM by necessity, because that was the most cost effective option available. Any modern limitations that prevent running your own software are not just artificial, but actually require additional effort to implement bootloader locking/integrity checks.

Or back to books where the OSes were written in ink. What's the point of this comparison?

Those still allowed you to run your own code.

ROM disassembly books existed for a reason.

I guess, the way Compaq was able to take advantage from IBM.

If everyone behaved as you do, we probably wouldn't have any progress.

I care about open smartphones, but not to the extent that I care about other things.

A de-Googled Android or iOS device with a judicious selection of apps is good enough to fulfill 80% of the "geek device" use case segment (though not at the same time - de-Googled Android is better at running arbitrary software, whereas iOS seems to be better at painless privacy). I'm just not invested enough in open smartphones to fight PinePhone's software immaturity, or to spend crazy amounts of cash on a Librem.

On the other hand, I was an adopter of the Pinebook, and will be for (affordable) productivity VR as soon as I get the chance. For both of these form factors, I'm more than happy to write 80% of the UI I use if it gives me what I want otherwise.