laptop

26 replies [Last post]
MANHOSO
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Joined: 03/16/2015

I wanted to buy the cheapest laptop possible compatible with trisquel.
if possible to be commercialized in Portugal or in Europe.
Thank you for your help .

MANHOSO
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Joined: 03/16/2015

all stores in Portugal sell laptops with windows.
shameful and a clear violation of European laws and market monopolization .
the consumer has no alternative or choice .

tomlukeywood
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Joined: 12/05/2014

i recently got a laptop from a online auction website for £25
and then £3.50 for an extra 2GB of RAM to make it work well

it works fine with trisquel and can play games like teeworlds minetest etc

so i recommend buying second hand laptops

the laptop i purchased was a dell inspiron 1300 and it works perfectly with trisquel even the wifi card

pizzaiolo
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Joined: 03/12/2015

I second this. Buying second-hand is a good way to NOT give Microsoft your money.

moxalt
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Joined: 06/19/2015

It's also a good way to reduce perceived demand for free software-compatible
computers, and a good way to let the few libre computer vendors there are to
die out. If you can afford it, buy from Minifree or Thinkpenguin. Support the
movement.

vita_cell
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Joined: 07/19/2015

Agree!

doolio
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Joined: 12/31/2013

I don't think they offer laptops but here is a relatively new Portuguese company that support free software. So it's not all bad in Portugal.

http://www.libretrend.com/en/hardware

and a previous thread on the subject. I believe aliasbody a forum member is behind the project.

https://trisquel.info/en/forum/librebox-small-computer

For laptops, I can't recommend highly enough http://minifree.org/. They currently offer the Libreboot range of laptops - the first laptops to be endorsed by the FSF. I have one of their Libreboot X60s laptops. Others have mentioned ThinkPenguin and Tehnoetic.

tonlee
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Joined: 09/08/2014

What mainboard is in the libretrend librebox?

onpon4
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Joined: 05/30/2012

It ultimately depends on what you need to do.

First thing's first: all of the stuff sold by Think Penguin and Tehnoetic will work perfectly with Trisquel:

http://libre.thinkpenguin.com
https://tehnoetic.com/

If the laptops sold by Think Penguin are too expensive, you'll have to go to one of the more mainstream stores, and that's where it gets tricky. Almost all of them will basically work. However, it's highly unlikely that WiFi will work, certain (if I'm not mistaken) that Bluetooth will not work, and possible that graphical hardware acceleration will not work.

For graphical hardware acceleration on laptops, your only chance of getting something that works is to get an Intel CPU. Until the Skylake and Broxten CPUs, whose integrated graphics have started requiring proprietary firmware blobs for hardware acceleration, all Intel integrated GPUs were powered by completely libre software drivers.

For WiFi and Bluetooth, you can get the mini adapters sold by the stores I mentioned above. Depending on your needs and laptop, you may alternatively be able to just use the Ethernet port for Internet access. (Some Ethernet cards require proprietary firmware blobs as well, but I don't think they're as frequent as wireless devices with this requirement.)

Chris

I am a member!

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Joined: 04/23/2011

I would say that saying 'almost all of them will basically work' is a bit extreme. People often have an incorrect assessment of the situation because they aren't buying new laptops at retail frequently. Most people are installing on older hardware which is less likely (although still very often problematic) to be a problem. NONE of the newer Intel systems for example are a good choice for free software users that are sold in store.

That said you'll be more likely to be able to get everything to work by buying an older system with Intel graphics (and only Intel graphics, so no AMD/NVIDIA) that isn't Dell, HP, Lenovo/IBM, Toshiba, Apple, or Sony. The later companies use digital restrictions to prevent users from replacing the wifi chip with one that works. That doesn't mean you won't run into problems with other components. For example many laptops have on/off wifi switches which are off-by-default. These systems won't work or won't work well because you can easily (even if they work at first) accidentally turn off the wifi and not be able to turn it back on or it might not work at all as it is default'd to off. This is even when you have a compatible wifi chip.

There are other problems with keyboards, screens (ie no backlight? the guy reverse engineering the Intel graphics chips isn't doing it any more in protest of Intel's half support for GNU/Linux, this despite it being better than others like NVIDIA/AMD), touchpads, and similar components.

It's far more difficult to buy a random computer and get it working right than most people seem to think. Even when stuff does work it often fails at a later point for one reason or another. There are very very few systems out there that are going to work really well over the long haul.

davidnotcoulthard (not verified)
davidnotcoulthard

(excuse the terseness and expectation of these of you finding your own way (there's a guide on the web) to flashing Libreboot, but anyway.....)

1. Look for the cheapest functioningused X60 you can find
2. Flash Libreboot on it.
3. Enjoy the keyboard!

Chris

I am a member!

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Joined: 04/23/2011

If your looking for cheap that's probably the best solution- provided your technical enough to do this. It's not the easiest of things to do though and people run into problems doing it all the time. I'd really suggest ordering from Mini Free rather than push someone to do it themselves. I've seen both Bob Call (LibreCMC) and Francis (ie of LibreBoot) run into trouble/difficulty in flashing these systems. And I believe Patrick (lead developer of Protein OS) also ran into trouble. So yea...

There is a GUI I think now, but I'm a little taken aback by it. It seems to trivialize the difficulty level in flashing these systems to that of a non-technical user.

MANHOSO
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Joined: 03/16/2015

just do not understand why consumers have no choice and have to contribute to microsoft and the competition authority in Europe is not working.
they do not want to sell laptops with Linux okay but at least sell laptops without OS will be too much to ask?

Chris

I am a member!

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Joined: 04/23/2011

Large international corporations rule the world. There is no choice because consumers don't have the information necessary to make informed decisions and price advantages of larger companies put smaller ones at a disadvantage in the marketplace.

I can try and educate people about the issue- and despite that 50% or more will still go out and buy the cheaper model despite that it comes attached with all sorts of problems or doesn't work at all.

davidnotcoulthard (not verified)
davidnotcoulthard

Now that I've come to think of it.....I think it comes down to computers evolving so fast they've become very advanced and prevalent in our lives before schools have adapted enough for people to be knowledgeable about them - it's a new haven of control not by the majority because the majority don't understand things like, in this case, at all (unlike the wee bits of physics, biology, etc we do get at schools).

Aaah....education. And I'm saying this while less than 100% of the world's human population get proper schooling. The humanity.

tonlee
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Joined: 09/08/2014

Why doesn't thinkpenguin sell pc mainboards?

moxalt
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Joined: 06/19/2015

You know, spam doesn't even annoy me that much when it's actually
*intelligible*.

moxalt
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Joined: 06/19/2015

> With deference, I can comprehend your dissatisfaction yet the issue is with
> the portable PCs industry.

This is what you get when you try to be polite through Google Translate.

> That is the reason we incorporate the video (with nice looking host)
> disclosing how to source a decent tablet.

'nice looking host'- shat myself with laughter.

> We'll be upgrading this article again soon, obviously.

Obviously.

Fucking spammers.

GNUsercn
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Joined: 10/13/2015

I am also concerned on his topic.

Wanna buy a ThinkPad T450 with Intel video card 940M. It seems not to support libre kernel(?).

So hesitating.

X60 and X200 are quite old, to be honest.

And I am in Asia, too feasible to ship a laptop or a WiFi dongle.

tomlukeywood
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Joined: 12/05/2014

"X60 and X200 are quite old, to be honest."

the x200 is decent laptop by modern standers it has a dual core CPU and up to 8GB of ram

and the only libre program so far i have come across that dose not run on it is the Dolphin emulator

Calinou
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Joined: 03/08/2014

The dual-core CPU does not have HyperThreading or Turbo Mode.

> and the only libre program so far i have come across that dose not run on it is the Dolphin emulator

You probably won't be able to run this: https://github.com/kmkolasinski/AwesomeBump

You may struggle with 3D programs like Blender too.

tomlukeywood
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Joined: 12/05/2014

Its runs Blender perfectly but AwesomeBump did fail to run:

snapshot1.png
davidnotcoulthard (not verified)
davidnotcoulthard

X60 and X200 are quite old, to be honest.

I have this personal law that computers older than Vista will struggle to do modern things, but those that, say, came with Vista will run pretty much everythingtypically needed by people since system requirements hasn't really seen an increase after Vista.'

When looking at it like that, the X200 isn't really bad....

SuperTramp83

I am a translator!

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Joined: 10/31/2014

everythingtypically needed by people?
I managed to do "everythingtypically needed" on a crappy atom with 1 gb of ram. Such is the power of GNU. My current installation takes 350 mb of ram on boot. Vista and all the other poor blobsforwin version can't compare.
But then again if you include in the "modern things" running Xonotic in fullhd and max settings..then the situation changes drastically. You'd need the power of 4 x200..

davidnotcoulthard (not verified)
davidnotcoulthard

Yeah, an atom with 1 GB of RAM will do.

My old P4 HT with 1 GB of RAM (and Nvidia 6200) easily did everything I needed it to do (unless I was running KDE anyway), just not everything I wanted......

......for which people should just get a bl**dy desktop.

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

I just had a rant about ridiculous Windows-influenced hardware expectations in the thread about 3D games. My Acer Aspire One has about the same specs as David lists here, and it has always done what I need. OK, I can't play games with superflash graphics (0AD will run but isn't really playable), and I can't do video editing (not yet anyway), but it works fine as a portable PC for stuff like web surfing, email, reading and writing documents, voice and video communications.

Yes, every now and then it lags, and occasionally even crashes. and I'm still not sure if it's because I'm overheating it, or because up until recently I've been running my web browser with JavaScript turned on. But considering what your average PC could do 10 years ago running Windows, there's no reason they shouldn't be able to do as much or more now, running GNU/Linux.

As Moxalt says, repurposing second-hand PCs does conceal the demand for GNU/Linux. But realistically, it also makes a working computer accessible to people who otherwise would struggle to afford one at all, while keeping money away from brand new computers, running Windows, which are designed to be basically disposable (any computer which can't be expected to work reliably for at least 5 years is the equivalent of a throw-away camera). We need to encourage people with money to support ThinkPenguin, MiniFree, ZaReason etc, but we also need to encourage GNU/Linux and application developers to do everything they can to make their software support any hardware that still physically works.

GNUsercn
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Joined: 10/13/2015

Gracias guys for your critical thinking