freedom friendly netbook
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do you guys have any recommendations for a freedom friendly ultra portable laptop or netbook? i'd like something 11.6" or smaller, with all the hardware supported by free software. I am willing to put up with a proprietary bios.
Lemote notebooks are tiny, but not very powerful.
they're also nearly impossible to get ahold of
No, they are sold on this website
http://www.tekmote.nl/epages/61504599.sf/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/61504599/Categories/"Lemote%20linux%20PC%20and%20Linux%20laptops"
Unless it is a scam?
sweet, thank you!
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Certainly not a scam, although at this stage the only two OS's actually running on the thing is gNewSense, which has packages older than either of us, and OpenBSD, which has a fairly sparse selection of at least recent packages.
As I understand it Parabola has more or less dropped support and it's halfway impossible to install it now because the base is so old, and you just get nasty dependency locks.
On 13/12/13 21:14, dudeski wrote:
> Certainly not a scam, although at this stage the only two OS's
> actually running on the thing is gNewSense, which has packages older
> than either of us, and OpenBSD, which has a fairly sparse selection
> of at least recent packages.
I don't know much about OpenBSD. gNewSense 3.0 supports the Yeeloong,
and is based on Debian Squeeze (oldstable) which was released in 2011.
So it's not /that/ old...
I'd be more concerned about the Yeeloong's lack of power. According to
Michał Masłowski's review, the older version of gNewSense didn't support
2D acceleration. I don't know if this is the case with the 3.0 "Parkes"
release.
Review: http://b.mtjm.eu/lemote-yeeloong.html
Also, I believe there are some light Chromebooks that can have their
BIOS manually wiped and reinstalled with the default coreboot, although
it sounds difficult and will probably void your warranty, plus there's a
risk of "bricking" your laptop. I also don't know how free-software
friendly they are in other areas, e.g. you might need to get a USB
wireless adapter to work with only free software if you use WiFi. I also
recall the x86 Chromebooks having glossy screens, which I personally
don't like...
If you exclude the BIOS from your achievable freedom criteria for a
lightweight laptop, you might want to check out this page for laptops:
http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/
The main thing to look for is a free software friendly WiFi adapter
(e.g. Atheros) and preferably an Intel video card, although nouveau
(driver for NVIDIA) is getting better these days for some older chips.
Finally, if you look around stores and check the specs of laptops online
you might find a few that are free software friendly, which might be
useful if you don't like ordering online. Again, if you can't find one,
maybe you could get a USB WiFi adapter from ThinkPenguin and then you
will get more of a choice.
Andrew.
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Let's all remember that by the time Debian hits stable it's already severely out of date.
Lack of acceleration is still the case, Xorg dropped support for the releveant type of extensions ages ago I believe. It's just a basic unaccelerated driver. For a truly ancient SM712 chip with 4MB of video memory. Yeah 4MB.
I believe Parabola actually had some semi-unstable partially accelerated driver but.. Yeah. Good luck.
Yeah, lack of power is a problem, especially if (like in OpenBSD) many packages needs to be compiled from the ports tree. Then again, a minimalistic install with cwm, dillo and other lightweight stuff works pretty well.
gNewSense also runs pretty zippy on it.. Not that you'd wanna use it for, say, internet browsing or anything.
If nothing else because the firefox 3.5 codebase isn't exactly getting bugfixes anymore...
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On 2013-12-13 07:14, Andrew Roffey wrote:
> If you exclude the BIOS from your achievable freedom criteria for a
> lightweight laptop, you might want to check out this page for laptops:
>
> http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/
Careful.
Unless you get a model that is sold with pre-installed Ubuntu, identical
models will have different chipsets (Windows vs. Ubuntu-specific).
Even then, you will get hardwrae that requires non-free blobs / firmware
/ drivers.
"Ubuntu Certified" means a combination of "works with free software" and
"we made deals and preinstalled non-free software in collaboration with
the OEM".
I would stay aways from that.
F.
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Fabián Rodríguez
http://fsf.magicfab.ca
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> I'd be more concerned about the Yeeloong's lack of power. According to
> Michał Masłowski's review, the older version of gNewSense didn't support
> 2D acceleration. I don't know if this is the case with the 3.0 "Parkes"
> release.
Newer X.Org versions broke and then removed the XAA acceleration
architecture needed for it, I don't remember what the version in Parkes
does. Acceleration that could be done wouldn't help much for modern
programs that use X in different ways.
There is CPU-side acceleration that needs newer pixman while Debian
disables it to support other MIPS CPUs (not needed since 0.30 which is
in Jessie). Videos could be playable if an interested user fixed or
rewrote patches for ffmpeg or the X driver that the original distro
uses.
> Also, I believe there are some light Chromebooks that can have their
> BIOS manually wiped and reinstalled with the default coreboot, although
> it sounds difficult and will probably void your warranty, plus there's a
> risk of "bricking" your laptop.
Their default "BIOS" is coreboot with uboot. They need nonfree firmware
From Intel which is signed (practically impossible to replace?) and
provides AMT on other devices, and other nonfree Intel code that could
be possibly replaced. They won't be as free as X60 or the YeeLoong is.
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You can also check www.h-node.org. It's a free software compatible hardware database and it has 360 laptops listed of which about half are quite freedom friendly.
You can also try www.thinkpenguin.com. They sell freedom friendly laptops.
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This might also be of interest.
http://trisquel.info/en/forum/gluglug-thinkpad-x60-w-coreboot-mini-review
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On 2013-12-13 03:09, name at domain wrote:
> do you guys have any recommendations for a freedom friendly ultra portable laptop or
netbook? i'd like something 11.6" or smaller, with all the hardware
supported by free software. I am willing to put up with a proprietary bios.
Chromebooks?
Some hints:
http://johnlewis.ie/pre-built-coreboot-firmware-for-chromebooks/
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=acer_c720_linux&num=1
F.
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Fabián Rodríguez
http://fsf.magicfab.ca
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I can recommend you either the Acer C720, or the ThinkPad X60/s model. The one from Acer has a 4th gen. Haswell-based Intel Celeron processor, Coreboot/SeaBIOS support, no vPro/TXT, and fully free software compatible hardware (except bluetooth, where external adapter is needed).
If you need a support for internal 2.5" HDD/SDD, there is also the older C710 model, which is based on the older 2nd gen. Sandy Bridge architecture. It has also upgradable memory, and of course Coreboot support, and fully FLOSS compatible hardware (except bluetooth - same as with notebooks sold at Gluglug).
The main benefit of X60/s (if Coreboot is flashed) is that it does not require BIOS blobs in order to be functional (same as with the older Lemote Yeelong 8101, but Lemote is not x86 compatible, therefore no Trisquel). Other than that, it's upgrade friendly (e.g. replaceable processor), but this doesn't count anymore, since the particular model was discontinued back in 2006. Yet, besides the T60/p model, it's the best choice if you want to perform your computing in complete freedom, without relying on microcode blobs in any form (it's still the preferred choice amongst free software hackers, like Trisquel/Replicant developers).
thank you everyone who responded. the information was insightful and helped me choose. I will probably get an x60/x60s. It has both freedom and enough power. A little bigger than I'd like, but not terribly so.
Again, thank you all.
OR a thinkpenguin, if i want something newer
The Thinkpad X60/s with pre-flashed free BIOS (aka Coreboot) can be bought here:
http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/ibm-lenovo-thinkpad-x60-coreboot/
Do not buy it elsewhere, unless you plan to flash Coreboot yourself (can easily brick the computer, while recovery needs special equipment).
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I have been using the acer aspire one zg5. came pre installed with linpus. 6 years later ssd still works, replaced battery for one that lasts 7 or 8 hours, and scavenged anotherone for a spanish keyboard.
i have seen the same model for sale second hand for £1.
I am tempted to buy for a 3 year old.
i am running gnome3shell no prblem. h-node qualifies it as gold or platinum, only non free is the BIOS.
I'm using an Asus Eee PC X101CH with Trisquel. h-node has good information on it and the fixes from a related notebook (linked in the h-node listing) worked well for me. Newer releases of Trisquel worked out of the box.
I replaced the hard drive with an SSD. I needed a pretty small/slim one, I wish I could remember the model number and size. It was a touchy replacement, but it works just fine once I got everything put back together.
The only real problem is that video is super choppy on this machine because it's only got 1GB of RAM. I put 4GB of swap space on the SSD hoping for some slower RAM, but it didn't do much good. YouTube (via minitube) is pretty laggy, as is most any other video. Now that I think about it, that may be a graphics issue as well. I'm sure it plays video fine using Windows.
At any rate, I'm happy with it. If you don't watch much video, it's a good little machine.
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Shame they don't make them like the 1000H anymore..
So easy, one big panel with two screws that got you straight to WiFi card, harddisk and RAM. Even got a modded bios on it to enable AHCI for the SSD.
Just in general though, if you want a bit more snappiness, should look into an Arch-based distro, like Parabola or whatever. I doubt the RAM is the problem.
As I understand it the 3.2 kernels that Trisquel uses by default doesn't even support the Cederview chips used in the X101CH.
EDIT: Oops, I stand corrected. The GPU is a GMA3600, which like the GMA500 is a nasty PowerVR thing that doesn't have proper accelerated drivers at all.
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