Idea for ThinkPinguin

4 réponses [Dernière contribution]
quantumgravity
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 04/22/2013

Hey everyone,
it would be great if thinkpinguin buys used notebook which are capable of coreboot, installs everything and sells them for an appropriate price.
I think I would buy one.
Of course I'm aware I'm not the first one with this idea. But perhaps you can tell me why it doesn't work.

For a normal person, buying a notebook and flashing the bios is a bit risky, since there's the danger of making the device unusable if something goes wrong.
A company could make a calculation and just raise the price of the working, corebooted notebooks if x numbers of devices got bricked.
And after the first weeks, things might be just a routine.

Or is it a problem like "this notebook *might* use this bios or not"?
Perhaps notebooks that turn out to have the wrong chip can be sold again on the normal market without big loss?

Michał Masłowski

I am a member!

I am a translator!

Hors ligne
A rejoint: 05/15/2010

> it would be great if thinkpinguin buys used notebook which are capable
> of coreboot, installs everything and sells them for an appropriate
> price.

It was discussed multiple times [0], [1]. It's nontrivial to port, old
machines get more expensive and used aren't reliable on a larger scale.

[0] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/penguin-gnu-linux-laptop-w-1920x1080-matte-screen-now-shipping#comment-36136
[1] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/coreboot-triquel-computers#comment-18170

> For a normal person, buying a notebook and flashing the bios is a bit
> risky, since there's the danger of making the device unusable if
> something goes wrong.

True. Some free boot firmware developers unsolder the chips or use
special devices for in-system flashing.

quantumgravity
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 04/22/2013

Ok, thanks.
I didn't expect things to be that difficult.

lembas
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 05/13/2010

But it's a great idea nevertheless.

mYself
Hors ligne
A rejoint: 01/18/2012

I wanted to post here a comment, but after I done the writing was deleted :-(.