open source hardware has a lot of potential
Especially when home manufacturing becomes more of a thing.
I mean home manufacturing is cool and all, but in the short term open source hardware has the potential to create a lot more competition in traditional manufacturing. Most big tech rely on IP nowadays, without it there would be more competitors to drive prices down and increase supply. Home manufacturing is more in the far future IMO
Test it with OpenBSD and with a Linux-libre distribution to verify how open the hardware is.
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This is patently false. As of now my Dell laptop doesn’t use any proprietary blobs to speak of.
Even if that’s true, that’s a different computer.
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Intel hardware is very well supported in all distros at this point. You don’t need to do any configuration with intel or nvidia at this point [running the open source driver]. You can have Arch up and running in minutes on certain Dells. My two are a 2021 XPS with Arch and a L5411 with Ubuntu [for work]. Both of these IIRC you can get with Ubuntu from Dell direct.
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The GPU and WiFi drivers are going to be the major limitations here. All GPU and WiFi vendors now require proprietary blobs in order to function.
No. OpenBSD develops their own drivers fot Intel iGPU l, 2.5Gb ethernet, and wi-fi. They don’t have.license to include them in base, they download the firmware after first reboot if there’s a basic ethernet connection.
The source code is publicly available from OpenBSD firmware folder on server, but cannot be included in the base installation.
Fingers crossed they’ll open that EU warehouse sooner rather then later. And they’ll sell more then their keyboards from it (I’ve been looking forward to at least those with affordable shipping for ages)
I have been watching system76 from afar for a long time and everytime I upgrade I look at their systems but I was never confident of local support. I bought an equivalent to one of their early laptops from a local company once. I think it is great that they are bringing more design in-house as rebadging generic systems limited their documentation and repairability.
While competition is good I can’t look past Framework at the moment. They shipped to me direct from Taiwan as fast as a local delivery and I know I can repair the system so it removes all the concerns I had about dealing with a niche foreign company. I see no value in PopOS or the other user space stuff from system76. Open firmware is an advantage but I think framework will get there eventually. As much as I respect system76s mission I think their business model is dubious. They should have gone in-house open hardware earlier and I think the userspace stuff is a pointless distraction.
That’s your opinion and that’s fine. For me, open hardware + hot swappable mechanical keyboard + trackpoint + designed to be repaired + the general opennes are the reasons why Virgo comes to my desk.
Framework is good for many and thanks to LTT will sell more units but I’ve been only with Thinkpads since 2008 so Coreboot + trackpoint are must-haves for me.
Framework 3:2 screen is a dealbreaker for me though… I’m not a coder so it doesnt benefit me at all
believe me: once you have it, you won’t go back. that extra height also gives the laptop more space for a bigger touchpad, which is also great.
that gba emulation though…
EDIT: I’m like 90% sure I’m remembering Purism here, not System 76.
I want them to succeed (and open source hardware in general), but I got burnt by one of their early ones. A complete lemon of a laptop. I’ve had better build quality out of Acer.
I was pleasantly surprised by my OG Framework DIY laptop though. They’re doing great work.
That’s based. I might give PopOS a try when their new DE reaches feature completion (since they don’t sell their laptops in my country unfortunately)
Pop is my new go to distro. Even without their own DE, the tweaks to gnome are really well considered and I don’t spend an hour unfucking the default environment.
I distro hopped forever until I finally landed on pop, staying on it for a long time before thinking about switching
I was on Pop for a while, if I was still using an Nvidia card I would still be on Pop. Their built in support/installer is just so convenient and seamless for the most part.
Nvidia is just such a pain on Linux. Like if it works then great, but I have had just so many minor problems in the past.
My Nvidia card is essentially just a backup now in my server in case I need video output for a terminal.
That’s awesome! Next laptop decided on.
